So what can you do to speed up your duplication job and avoid any nasty consequences? The first thing you should do to speed up your order is to know exactly what you are ordering. If you want a metal USB drive, knowing exactly which one makes it easier for our sales representatives to send you a formal quote much faster and will speed up the process. On each of our custom flash drive web pages, we have product descriptions and specifications to help you decide if the drive you are looking at is the right one for you.

The second thing you can do to speed up your duplication job is to supply Premium USB with all the necessary materials ASAP. This is probably the single MOST important step in the process. We often have clients who want USB drives super fast, but they aren’t hasty on supplying us with their master drive or promotional material; which delays their duplication process. Pictures, movies, PDF’s, and anything else you can think of that you would want on your promotional drives must be supplied to us if you want to keep your duplication job on track for your deadline.

The next best thing to speed up your duplication job is to stay in constant contact with your service representative. If any problems arise or we are missing any of the required information, getting in contact with you is vital to keeping your job on track. Readily check your email and keep your cell phones charged (alternate phone numbers are good too)!

If you are ordering custom printing, then having proper artwork is essential! JPEG and other file formats are nice to have for many different applications, but are not really suited for custom printing because files like JPEG are flattened and are not in high resolution. Flattened images simply mean that all the different elements in the artwork are all attached to one another and not independently moveable. Even Photoshop (PSD) or other “editable” files can be bad if the elements are flattened to one layer.

To avoid flattened images, simply keep your artwork layered. In Photoshop for example, if your artwork has 5 layers, supply us the PSD file with all 5 layers instead of a PSD file with only 1 flattened layer. If any changes need to be made to your artwork such as adjusting it to fit into the print area of your chosen USB drive, then layered files allows us to preserve the quality of your artwork. Flattened images cannot be altered.

The preferred file format is Vector (EPS). Vector files, unlike raster files, do not lose their quality upon resizing. So for example you can take a 1200X800 vector image, resize it to 2400X1600, and it will look identical to the original. If you were to do the same to raster files, they would become pixilated and make your artwork look low-res. To learn more about the differences, visit our Maximizing Your Print Area blog!

Adhering to our artwork requirements is huge!  When doing so, you will be much happier with the way your drives came out. As mentioned above, vector format is a must.  Next, using appropriate colors is vital as well. No more than 4 pantone colors ensure that your printed artwork looks vibrant and not clouded. One final additional note… Not too much detail on your artwork ensures that your clients will be able to actually read/see your artwork. It’s fairly common to want high detailed images on promotional drives, but because of the limiting size of the USB itself, images get smaller and it becomes increasingly difficult for even the best industrial printers to print complex images onto USBs.

Time is of the essence, so if you have any questions about the USB duplication process, don’t hesitate to call us; especially if you are in need of Express Service!

It’s true that not every promotional job is created equal. Sometimes you don’t need a 1-16GB custom flash drive to fulfill your promotional needs, but instead you require a smaller capacity drive. It is for this reason that Premium USB is now offering our lower capacity USB drives. With these new lower capacity drives, you get the same great looks and feel as one of the higher capacity drives, but you do not pay nearly as much!

Smaller capacity drives can seem like a bad idea especially in the promotional market, but can actually be a blessing in disguise. Quite frequently companies tend to not have enough promotional material to fill an entire USB drive. This of course means that there will be extra room on the USB. The extra room on a USB, as we have said in previous blogs, can be a rather good thing; but if you’re not interested in the benefits that extra space has to offer, then it really is just a waste of space and money.

Of course our brand new lower capacity drives have all the same great benefits that all our other custom flash drives offer. All of them are made from tier 1 (grade A) flash chips; we do not carry any tier 2 or tier 3 chips, thus ensuring that your promotion will not be ruined by inferior chips. All of our custom USB drives come with custom printing options. Put your company logo and contact information on the drive to guarantee your clients won’t misplace your information. And lastly all of our drives can be ordered with custom USB packaging to help create that truly one of a kind presentation.

To learn more about custom USB drives, contact Premium USB today. One of our account associates will be more than glad to assist you and answer any questions you may have. You could also post a question in the comment section below.

Of course, USB 3.0 will not replace 2.0 instantly or within the next few months, but the potential is there for 3.0 to replace 2.0 within the next couple years. With the advancement of USB 3.0, flash media such as solid state drives, large-capacity external hard drives, and even flash drives become much more appealing to customers. Imagine uploading or downloading a hi-def video in a matter of seconds rather than minutes!

Two and a half months into USB 3.0 release, It is safe to say that the USB 3.0 Promoter group, containing companies such as Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, NEC, Texas Instruments and ST-Ericsson, which developed USB 3.0, are pleased at how fast it has already caught on. The creation of the first 50 certified USB 3.0 products ranging from laptops and desktops to motherboards, PCI Express add-on cards, and our beloved flash drives in under three months is actually quite a feat. Imagine how many products will be USB 3.0 certified in the next couple months, or even by the end of the year!

USB 3.0, for those who may have been hiding under a rock, was released last December promising not only faster data rates, but also features higher energy efficiency, increased power delivery, and is backwards compatible to USB 2.0. For the technical savvy, USB 3.0 has a theoretical maximum speed of 4.8GB/s as compared to USB 2.0 at 480MB/s, and employs a new power saving feature that stops actively searching for information traffic and thus lowers energy consumption while supplying active devices more power.

If you are interested in USB 3.0, continue to check back with Premium USB as we will post updates of USB 3.0 and 3.0 related news.

For a complete listing of USB 3.0 Certified products, visit USB.org 3.0 Compliance.

A USB Drive may not seem very eco friendly at first; after all it does require energy to operate and does not provide energy like a solar cell, but what USB drives can do is severely cut down on the amount of paper and promotional materials for your next giant campaign. A single flash drive can save you hundreds if not thousands of sheets of paper due to their high data capacity; so imagine how many trees you could potentially be saving by not using paper and using USB drives instead. At Premium USB we would consider USBs paperless design to be fairly eco-friendly.

What about the USB drives material? We get asked this quite a bit from our customers and it is true that some USBs use plastics, rubber, and even metal casings to protect the flash memory itself, but there are USB drives that use more environmentally safe materials than others. Take our Bamboo Flip USB drive for example. The outer casing is made from real bamboo, which is biodegradable and less harmful on the environment than plastic or metal flash drives. By choosing an Eco-Friendly flash drives, you can not only cut down on your carbon footprint, but you may be overwhelmed with joy knowing that you helped keep our earth green in the process.

The Bamboo Swivel above was just an example of one of our Eco-Friendly USB drives, but we also carry the Carpenter, the Craftsman, Bamboo Shoot, Bamboo Swivel, Bamboo Snap and soon to be added Recycler and Recycler Curve. These new drives are made from 100% recycled material and will be soon offered through Premium USB. All of these drives mentioned are part of Premium USB’s Eco-Friendly USB line titled the “Natural USB” series and are helping lower our carbon footprint on a daily basis. These drives of course can all be customized with custom Laser Engraved printed logos and can come in a variety of colors.

If you are still unconvinced or have any inquiries about how eco-friendly USB drives can help you promote your next big product or service, give Premium USB a call today or post a comment below. We will be more than glad to answer any questions or concerns you might have.

Of course, all flash memory starts out the same; on one giant silicon wafer. Once the wafer is created and etched with intricate circuits, a machine then cuts out each chip. Generally speaking, the chips closer to the edges of this wafer are the ones that tend to be of lower quality. Chips that are cut and do not pass quality control inspections are automatically pushed aside by the machine.

Below are the differences in quality among custom USB drive’s flash memory.

Tier 1
The top of the line chips are called Tier 1, or grade A, and are the highest quality chips you can possibly get. These chips are found just about everywhere and are always laser etched with a serial number and manufactures name. Currently Samsung and Hynix are the largest producers of tier 1 quality memory chips. Tier 1 chips are the best quality because they have the lowest error rates, longest life spans, and are faster than all the other tiers. Lastly, these chips almost always come with a lifetime warranty.

Tier 2
Tier 2 chips are only a slight downgrade of tier 1 chips, but are still good chips to have. These chips are just as reliable as tier 1, have the second lowest error rates, and generally live about as long as tier 1 too. These chips may be etched with a serial number and name of the manufacturer, but it is not uncommon to see tier 2 chips without the etchings.

Tier 3 and Below
Remember those discarded wafer parts I mentioned? Well, tier 3 chips and below are made from these discarded pieces. Second-hand aftermarket vendors buy these discarded pieces from reputable manufactures and resell them to end users. These chips have roughly a 30-40% failure rate and have much lower life expectancies. In some severe cases, these chips have been known to cause system instabilities that can adversely affect the device or computer they’re used in.

Buying Guidelines
So what can you do to make sure you only receive tier 1 chips? Well as mentioned above, tier 1 chips almost always come with a warranty. Second choose a vendor that actually has their prices in tune with the current market prices. Some companies advertise tier 1 chips, but offer them at such a low price that they drastically stand out from the market. The reason they’re probably so cheap is because they are tier 2 or 3 chips, not actual tier 1. Lastly you should always talk to the vendor and ask them what the qualities of the chips are. If the salesman is unsure or is hesitant to answer those types of questions, you should probably go someplace else.

From all of us at Premium USB, we hope this has been both informative and eye opening. Now you know why Premium USB carries only tier 1 memory chips! Contact us today so we can help you get your USB project started with premium tier 1 chips right away!