Iomega Mini

The Iomega Mini is 3.37 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 0.37 inches thick--about the size of a tube of lipstick and almost three times larger than its tiny cousin, the Micro Mini. Dressed in a snazzy silver-and-gray plastic casing, the Mini has a belt clip and a cool metal ring that fastens around the length of the drive to prevent the cap from falling off and to allow for a keyring attachment. Iomega includes a few precut labels, which you can tuck behind a small, clear window on the drive's side. Aside from the labels and a brief, multilingual installation guide, the Mini does not come with any extras.

However, like Iomega's Micro Mini flash drive, the Mini supports Iomega's handy and unique Active Disk technology, which lets you use certain applications on any computer you plug into, even if the computer doesn't have those programs installed. A number of Active Disk-enabled programs are available for free on Iomega's Web site, including Preclick, a photo-editing app; PocoMail for e-mail; Musicmatch Jukebox, a digital-music player; and &siteid=7&edid=&lop=txt&destcat=ex_1&destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eiomega%2Ecom%2Fsoftware%2F">many more. Take note, however, that these programs will use up drive memory.

The Mini is available in capacities ranging from 128MB to 1GB. The 128MB model that we looked at costs around $70, or about 55 cents per megabyte, which is relatively expensive compared to other drives.

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