Hi Megan,
it is nice to see how you cover little naked USB drive :)

Just to add, plastic case add more strength to USB connector and USB drive electronic connection, in your case that connection isnt suported in all, and in many case will follow to break. be aware of that.

Maybe some rubber coverin will help.

Hi Megan,
it is nice to see how you cover little naked USB drive :)

Just to add, plastic case add more strength to USB connector and USB drive electronic connection, in your case that connection isnt suported in all, and in many case will follow to break. be aware of that.

Maybe some rubber coverin will help.

That poor flash drive has been rendered VERY fragile. I wouldn't trust it to stay safe in my pocket even by itself. And any significant bending, especially when inserting and removing it from a port, could easily break it.

Then there's the way Megan describes the drive's innards. "Moving parts?" "Mechanical-looking?" I can assure you such things do not exist in that device, unless you were using a steam-powered flash drive from the 1860's.

This is not to say I find this project useless. As a teacher, I plan to show this to my students. Unfortunately, like most of the 5-minute projects so far, I will be presenting it as a cautionary lesson on poorly thought-out innovation.

This is preposterous. Does she or the person who wrote the script even know anything about electronics? Surely not: "Moving parts" should have been, simply, "Electronics" and if you really wanted to sound cute, "Mechanical-looking" could have been replaced by "Circuity... Chippy... doohickey!" I know. This sucks too, but at least is not misinforming clueless readers that should obviously stop looking to Pop-Sci for information. Come on, Pop-SCI, a little more Sci on the Pop.

Shut up you lot. "oh it is now fragile" don't do it then. "I will be presenting it as a cautionary, blah blah blah" pompous.

And anyway, she is pretty.

Oy, this is the worst one yet! is this girl sleeping with someone at PopSci to get this gig? I sure hope it's worth it. i feel dumber just for having watched it. As several other commenters have already pointed out. 1) um, no moving parts 2) not a mechanical device 3) it's significantly more fragile now. Really, this is PopSCI, as in SCIENCE. No one under any circumstances should use the word "doohicky" in a PopSci vidcast. I see that our hostess is also listed as the producer for the other videos. I now understand why they are so craptacular. The videos are a great concept, but for the love of jebus, get some real projects/demos/content.

How about you just take them as a bit of fun and stop whining?

the whole 'I'm megan, I'm a pretty girl' thing is overdone, but this is still a kind of cool project.
I used a naked flash drive for a few months before losing it, not breaking it, and that was without plastic lamination. It even went through the wash twice (I did have the data backed up and expected to lose or break it, so I wasn't very careful :p).
But I do get worried when one of my main sources for keeping up-to-date in science calls a flash drive 'mechanical'.

With the irritation caused by the thoroughly non-sci details already mentioned, I forgot to comment a variation on this theme, which is to undress the drive and then redress it with transparent urethane, using the original enclosure as a cast.

I did this to an EXTREMELY ugly Viking 1Gb drive and the results were more than acceptable.

Looks cool, is reasonable sturdy, and won't get entangled with other stuff if thrown into an already populated pocket or bag.