Old School USB Flash Drives – A Blast From The Past
USB2U started selling USB flash drives back in 2002 under the brand name of DirectUSBStore. In those days flash drives were still relatively new, most of them were USB 1.x rather than the faster USB 2.0 standard that is commonly used today and typical USB flash drive memory sizes ranged from 16MB to 128MB.
It’s also fair to say that back in 2002 USB flash drives were typically purchased by “early adopters”, mainly men, and mainly men who liked to be the first to get their hands on new “tech” – so nothing much has changed there then! The adoption of Flash drives was relatively slow because they were still relatively expensive (the price for a 128MB was around £30) and Zip Drives, Floppy Drives and CD’s were still the preferred medium for personal data storage.
The styling of the early flash drives was pretty basic, there was limited choice and by comparison to today’s flash drives they were large and “chunky”. But, in their favour was incredible ease of use, portability and the ability to carry significantly more data than you could fit onto multiple floppy disk drives. The roll-out of USB ports onto all PC’s also ensured that flash drives could be used on pretty much any PC; be that at home, work or school.
Given their cost and slow adoption the number of companies buying USB flash drives printed with their logo on as a promotional give-away was small in 2002. Companies that did buy them typically were using them to target “early adopter” consumers or clients or they were high tech companies that wanted to use a promotional product that illustrated their “high-tech” credentials.
Today, some 8 year later, the floppy disk drive and the zip drive have been consigned to the bin, CD’s are nowhere near as popular as they were because they are cumbersome to carry and tiresome to save data to. By comparison USB flash drives everywhere!
USB Flash drives have in 8 short years risen in popularity to become the de facto method for storing and transporting data. Today they are a common business tool and are on the “kit list” for most schools and universities. They have also become one of the most given and most sought after promotional products with millions given away every year.
Their popularity has been underpinned by falling prices, larger memory sizes and the development of a phenomenal range of styles and designs. USB flash drives are now within financial reach of pretty much everyone and the type of flash drive used by someone can say as much about their style and fashion habits as their clothing.
DirectUSBStore spun off a separate business (USB2U) to focus on the supply of branded USB flash drives and fully bespoke USB memory sticks and today it is widely regarded as the number one supplier of such products in the UK. If you’re looking to source USB drives with your company logo on or perhaps your school crest then give the team at USB a call – you’ll be in safe hands.