With the thankful demise of the floppy disk, the industry has moved towards other forms of portable storage to fill the void. If you have a broadband internet connection, an e-mail attachment is often good enough for small files, but above 10MB or so this becomes impractical.

Portable flash devices have become hugely popular, being ultra small with no drivers needed. This translates as easy transportation of files and the ability to keep your essentials with you at all times. The largest of these are around 512MB, which isn't always big enough. The next jump was previously an external hard drive, which could be anywhere from 10GB to 250GB.

MSI have tried to fill the market gap by introducing their 1.5GB device based on the 1" micro drive. These micro drives are currently finding uses in many digital cameras and MP3 players.

This rather stylish device has a smooth metallic finish and measures in at 57.5(W)x69.7(H)x13.1(D) mm. This is pretty small, being slightly shorter than a credit card. At 56.5g this is also ridiculously light. It comes with a leather carry case, but it strangely has no belt strap. This goes down as pretty useless in our books.

Connectivity is via USB 2.0 with a maximum transfer speed of 5.5MB/sec. It is backwards compatible with USB 1.1, but at a lower speed (estimated 1.5MB/sec). As you can see above, there is a USB swing arm which tucks away neatly inside the chassis. For those who don't have front USB and aren't fond of hunting around the back of your machine, a USB extension cable is provided.

Included with the device are a three very simple utilities, for backup, encryption and mail synchronization.

At £85 including VAT from RL Supplies, this is a fair chunk of money but it works out at quite good value considering a 512MB USB flash drive will sell for around £45. Our main gripe would be the lack of resellers stocking it, which may make it a little tricky to get hold of.