Kingston goes native in Taipei

IT ISN'T EVERY day that you go into the Kingston booth at a trade show and feel your jaw drop. At Computex that is just what happened.

Kingston Terra Cota sticks

The first thing you notice is the two new lines of flash memory, the Datatraveler (DT) Terra Cota and DTEX. The Terra Cota is a bronze-colored memory stick covered with Chinese design themes, guess which ones. It is a solid chunk of metal, and weighs enough to feel good. The DTEX is similar in heft, but looks like a 1950's silver lighter. If you see them on sale, pick one up, they just feel good.

From there, there was the usual bigger better faster lineup, for example HyperX flash drives now come in sizes up to 16GB, cleverly named DTHX/16. The SD4/32 is a class 4 SDHC card that sports 32GB of storage, HD video camera enthusiasts take note. Basically most lines are bigger and faster.

Not one but two musical gods in a single booth

Then it hit me like a wax-chested Bollywood star singing disco-ish songs from the bowels of a fab, mainly because it is a wax-chested Bollywood star singing disco-ish songs from the bowels of a fab, for free no less. Kingston is introducing the KW-C011G-2AAQ, aka the 1GB Shakrukh Khan edition microSD card.

Yes, for those of you wanting to hear those stirring melodies from Shakrukh's new album, Om Shanti Om, there are no less than five of them on this card! Wow. I mean really, what's next, a Ricky Martin Live branded microSD card?

Well since you asked, the technical name for it is the KC-B041G-1FAQ, and no I am not kidding. It has the usual pics, movies and goodies from Rickie's new Black and White tour. To show that Kingston is leaving no kitchy trend unexploited, there is also a World of Warcraft memory stick for the Asian markets that comes with the game installer on it and a few goodies.

In case you didn't get the picture, Kingston is localizing memory sticks by putting 'content' on them. It is a trend that I see as the future, with capacities climbing, prices dropping, and just about every form factor under the sun exploited, they had to do something to stand out.

This does it, and it is a great marketing idea. I can't wait for the Brittney Spears Breakdown stick with head shaving razor, wallpapers, songs, and anti-psychotic drug wizard and scheduler preloaded.

Coming in Q3 by court order. µ