Holding its place as the world’s third-largest OEM buyer of flash, Apple’s weight in the memory industry is indisputable. On that, a market research company expects a near-term boost to the NAND prices and a coinciding increase to Micron’s stock price.
Here at USB Company we will continue to follow the market and manage our stock purchases so we can continue to offer our clients good quality products at a competitive price.
There are two types of NAND Flash memory architectures: MLC(Multi Level Cell) and SLC(Single Level Cell).
In a nutshell, MLC are used in those devices requiring high performance at an attractive cost such as USB sticks and voice recorders.
SLC are used in the higher performing technology that is used to enable streaming video and Internet capability in handheld electronics such as 3G cell phones, PDAs, digital still / video cameras and MP3 players etc.
All our branded USB drives use MLC memory from Hynix, Samsung or Micron unless otherwise specified. MLC NAND Flash is rated to last approximately 10,000 cycles, which is considered more than sufficient for the average consumer application.
For example, a USB drive application that used the 10,000 write/erase cycles would enable the user to completely write and erase the entire contents once per day for 27 years, well beyond the life of the hardware.
We would also like to warn people about companies offering VERY cheap flash drives. Although many of the products appear same, the inside might be VERY different.
We spend a significant amount of resources in quality control and service. Therefore, our product prices are never the lowest in the industry. We want to give you some facts so that you can better protect your rights and investments.
In general there are four methods to dramatically lower the production cost of the USB flash disks. Unfortunately whichever method or combinations are used, product quality is sacrificed. These methods are usually some of the following:
Whenever these methods are applied, you can expect problems such as users being unable to save onto the flash disk, or read and copy from the flash disk. It often occurs that operating systems can’t recognise the flash disk, I/O error messages occur, and storage capacity diminishes as the time passes.
By choosing USB Company, you can rest assured none of these will occur.
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We often preload our clients usb drives with marketing material and one question which often comes up is which format to use for Video preloads.
Therefore we thought it would be good to give our clients some advice on what format to use for the video preload for usb memory sticks.
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There is basically three options:
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1. Quicktime- This format will play on all platforms (Windows and Mac) However most windows users will have to download quicktime if it is not already installed on the PC.
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2. Windows Media Player- This format will only play on PC, however Mac users are able to download some 3rd party video player called VLC which plays all formats.
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3. Produce two videos one for Windows and one for Mac and put in two folders names “Windows” and one called “Mac”
This would be the best solution as the mac users could just delete the Windows folder to free up space and vice verse for windows users.
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It also depends on your target audience, if your clients are in the media/advertising industry they are more likely to use Macs and Quicktime should be the right choice.
On the other side if your clients are a government organisation they are more likely to be PC users and Windows Media Player would be the right choice.
We hope that this sheds some light on the issues, if you have any questions please dont hesitate to contact us
This week the USB Company sourcing team has been busy trawling the busiest gifts fairs in the world making sure we can offer the best quality usb promotional products at a competitive price.
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The Global sources and the Canton fair is held every April in Hong Kong and China and is where International buyers meet with worldwide suppliers to make the best deals and see the latest product news.
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This year we saw fewer of the smaller factories from Mainland China and we see a trend that there are fewer but bigger factories. There is still hundreds of suppliers and we believe this is a good thing as we can get more consistency. The small suppliers which often only was nothing more than a shed with an assembly line, often flooded the market with cheap sub quality products.
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We had several good meetings with our suppliers and we are happy to see them improve on their quality control procedures and flash memory buying, meaning they can continue to offer us competitive prices and the best quality.
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We will also be adding a few new promotional usb products in the coming months which we believe should further strengthen our product line and be of interest to our clients.
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We also noticed a slight increase in the price for 1GB flash drives as the demand was rising during the Exhibitions but we believe the prices will stabilise shortly.
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Ok that is all for now we are off for another supplier meeting and then we need a well deserved foot massage after all this walking:)
We just had a call from one of our customers who by mistake have given one of our branded usbs for a tumble in his washing machine. Gladly he could inform us that the USB is still working and the logo is still as new(just cleaner). Although this is not something we reccommend it proofs that our promotional USB’s are of the best built and quality!
USB Company ,UK’s leading provider of high end promotional USB gifts are pleased to announce that John Mason have joined USB Company as a sales account manager. John will be looking after new accounts as well as taking care of existing clients.
John is a welcome addition to our team and will play a key role in further improving our sales process and his extensive experience and dedication to outstanding results are exactly what USB Company needs to continue to deliver the high level of value and customer service as our business continues to grow.
Welcome John!
We sometimes get weird requests here at USB Company. This time we were asked to create a USB in the shape of a sperm with the Durex branding. Our designers came up with a Durex keyring powered by the latest 1GB chipset from flash producer Hynix. Unfortunately the client put the project on hold this time but you never know the Durex usb might be available sooner or later 
When you get to that stage between dating and engaged and you know a proposal is forthcoming, your thoughts turn to rings. For those men looking for an unusual temporary rock, here’s a suitably gadgety suggestion… Take one USB flash drive, add a Swarovski crystal and slip onto finger. Wait for “yes”. Unless your partner is a geek your probably better off going to your “normal” jewelery store….
If you dare there is more here
The 3.0 USB Superspeed is expected to be introduced in Q2 2009. USB 3.0 is set to be 10 times faster than the current standard and exceed the speed of most harddrives available today. With the trend of larger capacity usb flash drives this is welcoming news. USB Company will of course follow the developments and will introduce the new standard as soon as it becomes available from our ISO9001 certfied production sites.