Unrestricted In Efficiency

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Free USB Flash Drives

Over Thanksgiving weekend, my DW and I attended an investment conference in San Francisco. I enjoy collecting the freebies that are made available by exhibitors at these conferences. I have discovered a new trend in freebies: USB (Universal Serial Bus) flash drives. A USB flash drive is a portable computer memory that plugs into a computer USB port and can be used like a small hard disk. USB Flash drives are also known as thumb drives.

In the past, exhibitors have used a variety of media to get their messages across. Typically, they have used glossy brochures, and CD-ROMs containing information about their companies. Now, some companies have put their annual reports, company press releases, PowerPoint slides, and other data onto USB flash drives that they give away as freebies. I was able to snag a couple of these 512MB drives from a booth at the conference. My DW also got a free MP3 player for herself. In this case, the 256MB MP3 player also contained soft copies of company literature from the sponsoring firm. Of course, the casing of each USB flash memory is printed with the company logo, so it is unmistakably a freebie. After viewing the information on the USB flash drive, the memory can be re-used for whatever purpose the user wants.

I think this is a shrewd move on the part of the exhibitors. When their company literature was contained on a CD-ROM, I might choose not to view it. However, when the information is on a USB drive, I pretty much have to at least glance at it once (even if it is only to delete the data so that I can re-use the flash memory). With a bunch of new freebies in hand, I've chalked up another successful investment conference!

I'm not sure of other venues or companies where these free USB flash drives are available. But if anybody else knows where to get more, I'd be interested in hearing from you.

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