Clever and stylish, Iomega's Micro Mini measures a diminutive 1.8 x 0.8 x 0.3 inches and weighs 0.3 ounce
Price: $89
by William Van Winkle
Clever and stylish, Iomega's Micro Mini measures a diminutive 1.8 x 0.8 x 0.3 inches and weighs 0.3 ounce. You could almost fit it in your wallet. The drive comes with three covers in black, blue, and bronze that swivel to cover or expose the USB connector. When closed, it doesn't take much pressure to rotate the USB connector into the open, so beware of potential damage. The drive comes with a neck chain and LED-lit USB extension cord for the fashion conscious.
The Micro Mini includes Iomega's Active Disk technology that allows the flash drive to replace the hard drive as a boot device. You're essentially running a Linux desktop with Linux applications, such as OpenOffice, along with the data you create and save to the drive. Very slick.
We were a bit disturbed that the Micro Mini failed during HD Tach's sequential read test. Since we saw no other problems with the drive, we suspect this is the result of some kind of incompatibility with a background application or driver on our test system. Iomega did well in our transfer test, with a second-place transfer time of only 32 seconds. The Micro Mini delivers a lot of punch for less than $90.
