Product Review: EP-ACP 4 GB Flash Drive

ACP-EP 4 GB Flash Drive

In February of 2007 I purchased a 4 GB ACP-EP flash drive. To say that this product is indispensable and well worth the money would be an understatement. The drive is very small, about three inches long and one inch wide. The drive plugs directly into one of the USB ports on my laptop. I can transfer movies, pictures, word docs, power point presentations, excel files, and even mp3s. Although I am not a major gamer, I am not a monk either. The one game that I do own, that my computer will let me play even on its small amount of memory, is Off World Resource Base. This file is huge, and it even quickly transferred this file from my hard drive to the flash drive. So far, it has not let me down at all. Let me just tell you about some of the applications of this fantastic product.

I bought the product initially to back up my files. I am currently taking online classes and have had one or two hard drive crashes. Luckily these crashes have not happened when an assignment was due. If that had been the case, I would have not only have lost the assignments, but I would have had to redo them and they most probably would have been late and graded lower. With my EP 4 GB flash drive, I save all my documents. In case of a crash, I can use a friend's computer or the library's, proceed to finish up the assignment and submit it.

From the research that I have done on flash drives, there are two types of flash drive technology. Single Level Cell memory can withstand about 100,000 write cycles and Multi Level Cell memory can withstand about 10,000 write cycles. The specification sheet for the product on the ACP-EP website http://www.acp-ep.com/usb_miniflash20_specs.html indicates 1,000,000 times for read/write operation. This is good enough for my use.

As with most awesome products, the user finds more applications for than expected. Recently I wanted to share a sermon with a friend of mine. Instead of emailing the huge mp3, I saved it to my flash drive and then listened to it on his computer. The product reads and writes quickly. Recently, while doing a church member list, my friend created the list in word and wanted it done in EXCEL. Since I don't have a 3 ½ inch floppy, I plugged in the flash drive saved it and transferred the file to my computer so I can work on it in EXCEL. It worked like a charm.

As with any product there are drawbacks. The one thing I wish this product has is a gauge that would tell you how much space was left on the drive. Other than that it's perfect. I just plug it in to the USB port. I click on my computer, find the drive, and all my documents are right there. The drive has a blinking light that indicates when it is in use so that the user does not unsafely remove it. It's awesome.

The kicker is that I get a thirty dollar rebate from Circuit City for a sixty four dollar purchase. At a little less than ten dollars a GB, it's a steal in my opinion. I am considering purchasing the 16 GB. They also have 512mb, 1 GB, and 2 GB sizes.

I would recommend this product to anyone that wants to back up important files that are on their hard drive, transfer documents and work on them on different computers, or wants the capability to carry 4 GB of memory in their pocket without anyone knowing.