This is silly. Just use TrueCrypt. Even if you are forced to give over password you can have hidden files in the noise encrypted free space.

Cool, but ultimately worthless. A geek widget I'd never use.

I noticed in the example pictures the unit is not plugged in. How easy is it to run your finger over the scanner with it sideways and wedge between two other cables? I guess you have to carry a short extension with you when you want to use it.
I'd like to try this with some liquid latex- make a mold of the finger tip. I guess the photocopy/laser printer might work as well with the raised texture.

Has the person with the French manicure been screened for lung or heart disease? Their fingers are clubbing significantly. Can also be genetic, but just a thought.

Great that we're aware of the encrypted thumb drive, but I'd like to know how secure it really is. You guys test everything else completely, but there was no real testing in this review.

I would prefer that they had skipped the fingerprint-reader begoofery and instead installed a password-locked hardware interface between the drive's controller and the flash memory.

Can you resize the encrypted partition? What would make sense would be to have ~25% of the drive with an encrypted partition and the rest as a regular un-encrypted partition. Think about it. Generally the stuff that you want encrypted is going to be like word or excel documents, which generally aren't large. Things that you don't care about are drivers and game demo's, both of which can become rather large. So, obviously, have the best of both worlds on 1 stick!

Hey, did anybody see that Mythbusters episode where they showed you how to defeat a fingerprint lock? Kind of cool, really. I guess A-Data (whoever the hell they are) missed that episode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%28season_4%29#Fingerprint...

It's easier to get fingerprints than it is someone's password (providing they aren't stupid enough to write it down and leave it in their top desk drawer).

Nice nails, Geoff. I guess the squared off thing works better for keyboarding.

Whenever I see these cheap fingerprint readers I always want to start fooling with fingerprint photocopies to see if I can trick the things. But I've never got around to it when I had a reader, a photocopier, and free time all at once.

As noted below, fingerprints aren't secure: period. 2 or 3 factor authentication is the way to go, however much a hassle it may be.

Reviewing a thumbdrive with built-in security is quite worthless in my opinion without
checking out the actual security and how it could be hacked. The Dutch tech-site
Tweakers.net has had quite a few of these drives to review, and all of them failed to
resist some hacking with reasonably available tools.

Babelfish translation of their latest shot at a fingerprint thumbdrive:
http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?...nl_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fcore.tweakers.net%2frev...[l.com]