When I first spoke to Memorex, they wanted me to review a plain old 2GB USB flash drive that was uninspiring and most importantly, nothing to write home about. Well, the PR lady at Memorex had just gotten a hold of the new Travel ID flash drives with a built in LCD, and my initial response was— “Now that’s more like it!”  

It’s only a 1GB USB flash drive, but the attractive feature comes in the form of an LCD screen that tells you how much memory I have left. So instead of plugging the drive in and clicking on properties, I can find out just by looking at the LCD screen. I plugged it in once, after I tore off the packaging. The LCD initiated right away, saying I had 973MB left, and I haven’t plugged it back in for 3 days. That tells me the screen is energy efficient, and I’m guessing it can last a lot longer than that. The LCD has a bar chart that shows the capacity, for those that are not good with numbers. The only pet peeve I have is that the cap is completely detachable, which means I’ll lose it, eventually.  

The drive will go for $200 and is not yet available in retail stores.