Now is the perfect time to be thinking about that big tradeshow or conference in the fall. With a little lead time, BestFlashDrives.com can design and create a completely custom-shaped USB drive for just for you!

Custom-shaped drives are very affordable and the minimums are not as high as you might expect (especially compared to most other type of products).

So contact us by email at service@BestFlashDrives.com or give us a ring at 877-251-2867 and let us help you super-charge your next promotion with a unique and useful promo!

Here’s a great article we thought you should know about - tips and instructions on how to run several different flavors of Linux (an open source operating system) directly from your USB flash drive.

This lets you boot up a computer and run only on the USB flash drive, the advantage being that it’s like running your own PC (with your desktop, etc.) on any computer!

Here’s the link to the article in Information Week, hope you find it as useful as we did!  Please let us know if you find any other similarly helpful articles and we’ll be sure to post on the BestFlashDrives.com blog.

From admissions directors at major universities to local school districts, people in education have discovered a fantastic promotional and student-appreciation item - the USB flash drive.

Custom-printed with the school’s logo, or even custom-shaped in the form of the school’s crest or mascot, USB drives are the red-hot ‘must-have’ with students now.

Besides being a great gift and branding opportunity, they are also highly useful - enabling students and faculty to share assignments and study material in a very easy, portable way. And with all the cool styles available they are always a cool accessory for students.

Show your school spirit with your school’s logo on a memory stick from BestFlashDrives.com!

Hello from BestFlashDrives.com! Today’s blog is about another growth area we’re seeing for USB memory sticks - the healthcare industry.

USB flash drives are being used more and more in hospitals and medical centers to transfer data - great for those poorly networked locations where you have to get xrays or charts from computer ‘A’ to computer ‘B’, or most likely off a network onto a laptop.

I was in a local hospital just last week and was surpised to see a nurse at a mobile workstation transferring data using a memory stick instead of a LAN cable or wifi. She said it was the only way to get data off the network onto her workstation - yikes! Anyway, good for her for improvising around a less-than perfect system.

We’re also seeing these getting popular with drug pushers, I mean representatives; the drives make a great promo to give to doctors and nurse practitioners on drop-ins. They can be printed with the company logo and loaded with files with data about the drug(s).

Another great healtcare application for USB drives is for anyone with a medical condition that may require emergency care. They can carry their records with them at all times on a USB drive for quick access by medical professionals in an emergency. There are several companies actually built around this model, a good idea.

Stay tuned for more posts and look for new products on our website!

Greetings from BestFlashDrives.com. We’re starting a series today about the growing markets and uses we’re seeing for our customized USB flash drives.

One of the biggest growth sectors we’re seeing is the music industry. More musical artists, labels, and promoters are using custom-printed flash drives to load MP3’s of their music as well as album art, photos, and even music videos.

It makes sense; at a meeting, trade convention or other person-to-person venue, artists or their agents can promote themselves by giving out everything needed in a handy little press kit that fits easily into a pocket: music, bio’s, photos, videos - all right there at the fingertips. No more bulky folders with CD’s or DVD’s falling out and no more giving out a business card and hoping the recipient takes the trouble to actually go to the website listed to check out some tracks and download the kit.

With a high perceived value, the USB drive is kept, the artist’s name receives exposure simply by being printed on the drive, and the music and material are downloaded and used - a win.

On the retail side, it’s a point-of-purchase product that is purchased as a two-fer - buying music and buying merch. Once the music is downloaded, the USB drive becomes just like that band t-shirt or hat that’s brought to school or work - dare we say the Foghat belt buckle of the 2000’s?!

Greetings from BestFlashDrives.com! Today we’d like to share with you some very cool info that will boost your USB flash drive to the next level of functionality. Impress your friends and co-workers with some geekyness they never knew you had!

As you know, logo printed USB drives are fantastic for file storage and transfer, but that’s just the beginning. Now with this piece of FREE software called PortableApps, your flash drive becomes your own portable personal computer, loading up all your personal programs and preferences on any Windows computer.

In the words of the PortableApps website, it allows you to, “carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.”

This program is an open platform that works on any USB drive. And as I mentioned, it’s a totally free application, with no spyware, advertisements or anything - they don’t even require you to register your email!

The beauty of this software is that you can bring your USB drive to any Windows computer, plug it in, and start using your own software such as FireFox browser, with all of your add-ons, settings, and even bookmarks intact. Then, any work you do on the host computer is saved to your memory stick, not the computer, so when you unplug the drive, none of your personal data is left behind.

To check out this software and get the free download, just go to PortableApps.com. Enjoy your mobile computing, and for all of your custom USB drive needs, please check out our website!

Greetings from BestFlashDrives.com.  We’ve just come across some interesting new info on the environmental impact of USB flash drives vs. CD’s and DVD’s.
The energy needed to burn a CD is up to 100 times greater than the amount of energy required to load data onto a USB flash drive, factoring in the amount of petrochemicals required to make CD’s and DVD’s.

There were about three billion 1-time use CD’s sold in Europe and North America last year.  Multiply that by the amount of energy to produce each of these, and the petroleum used in the discs themselves, and it’s obvious how much waste this is.

Let’s face it, most people use CD’s and DVD’s for one use and then that’s it, they’re usually thrown away.  They’ll burn a CD to send give data to a co-worker, customer, etc, maybe drop it in the mail to them or hand it to them at a meeting, then that person pops the CD into their computer and downloads the data and chucks the CD in the garbage.  (We hope not, but I’m afraid that’s what happens!)

USB flash drives provide a much better alternative.  With a life of at least 10 years, they can be reused again and again - when was the last time you heard of someone throwing away a USB flash drive?!  Never!

So when going green at your company, we encourage you to start using USB flash drives rather than burning environmentally costly CD’s and DVD’s!

Greetings from BestFlashDrives.com! We’re very excited to announce that we now have available high-powered security software for many of our custom USB drives. This is in addition to our “Privacy Drive” USB flash drive.

If you need to order USB flash drives that enable users to lock data securely on the drive, just let us know, and we can show you 5 styles that are available. We pre-load this bomb-proof software onto each memory stick for you, so it’s ready to use.

This is no simple password lock either, we’re talking about the strongest security available, 256-bit Blowfish level encryption. 128-bit encryption has never been cracked, and this is twice that!

This added service for your USB drives from BestFlashDrives.com enables you to securely protect confidential files, so that only the user has access to them.

It not only password protects, but also encrypts all the data on the drive, preventing a work-around hack.

With a simple drag-and-drop interface, it’s easy to load files on the drive - and lock them in the vault!

Greetings from BestFlashDrives.com!  Today we’re excited to bring you news of a new product line - Privacy Drive.  This drive has special security software that locks your data up tight, 128-bit encryption tight.

We’ll have more on this new product for you soon, with all the tech-geek details for any geeks our there.  For the rest of us, just ask for Privacy Drive, and you’ll get best-quality USB flash drives with bomb-proof security.   See you next week!

Greetings from BestFlashDrives.com. For today’s blog entry we’ve found a great how-to tip: what to do when you’re trying to remove your USB drive and you get that annoying Windows error saying the device is still in use and can’t be safely removed now, try again later.

There’s a great explanation of what to do about this in a PCWorld article by Lincoln Spector, check it out!

In a nutshell, he tells us the problem is that Windows won’t let you unplug your USB flash drive if it thinks you have any files on the drive open (being used by a program). So to remedy that, open up Task Manager and look through the Processes and find any files that are being run off the USB drive and close them, then Windows should allow you to turn off the USB flash drive and unplug it.

Of course there are always situations where Windows still gives you the error, at this point even more annoying. Lincoln suggests what I call the towel move, and that is to shut everything down and reboot (i.e. just throw in the towel). This most always works, but of course takes time.

There’s also a very helpful comment on this article by somebody, describing a new Windows Vista feature that allows you to create a “quick unplug” icon for all of your USB devices, so you don’t have to deal with this error in the future, check that out too, could prove to be very helpful.

Thanks all for today, thanks for checking in!