Apple is famous for many things. They are famous for making the iPhone and iPad, they are famous for their never ending stream of patents for things that already exist and last but not least they are famous for making sure that you cannot use their mobile products without their approval. You see if you buy an iDevice your core file system is pretty much locked down. Now there are ways to get into the file system and move things around, but it can get messy and things do not always make the transition intact. The other side of this is that there is no way to add more storage to any of their products. It is not like an Android or Windows based tablet with an SD card slot or USB ports. So what can you do if you bought one of the 16GB non-3G iPads or if you only own the iPad touch? Kingston has an answer for you. Kingston has put their expertise in making flash drives to good use and attached a flash drive to a wireless controller that can also act as a wireless bridge. They are calling it the Wi-Drive and when you pair this up with the WiDrive app from the AppStore you might just have a relatively low cost answer to a lot of people’s needs. So follow along as we take a look at the $180 32GB Wi-Drive on a first generation iPad.
Value -Value is another very subjective topic. What is expensive to some might be a deal to others. You can look at this topic in multiple ways. One is raw price and the other is what you get for the money. Each is accurate and both are correct ways to look at price/value. We tend to look at features, performance and real-property when we discuss value. However, we also take into account the raw cash cost of the item.So the Wi-Drive is $180. That is a good deal of money for a 32GB device but let’s take a look at what you really get for that amount. You get a 32GB Flash Drive; the least expensive 32GB flash drive that we could find from Kingston was $40, now you can bet that the Wi-Drive is not using the same controller or the same chips as that drive, but we will let the $40 stand. Next we went looking for a portable Wi-Fi bridge. The least expensive portable wireless router that could bridge a Wi-Fi connection (and was still able to maintain n-Spec wireless) was $78 and that did not have a battery. So we have covered $118 of the $180 price tag and we have not even accounted for a four hour batter for these two items. Breaking things down in this manner we find that $180 might not be all that much to pay for Kingston’s Wi-Drive (even without a case).Conclusion -The Wi-Drive is a nice product, however it has a single market vertical (Apple mobile products). This will limit it market penetration even though there are a lot of Apple devices out there. By alienating the “other half” of the mobile market Kingston may have inadvertently pushed many Android Owners to their competition. Still there is good news for the Android gang, Kingston has made mention that a Version of the Wi-Drive could be available soon (after Apple says it is ok). If you are an Apple mobile product owner then the Wi-Drive is certainly tailor made for you. It offers extra storage, great streaming speeds and Wi-Fi routing for a decent price. For the rest of us, we will have a little bit of a wait before we get to have our own Wi-Drive that we can use.Discuss this in our Forum
