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Thumb drives have become rather prolific in this day and age. I have one, my mother has one, and one of my brothers has two. Everyone here at Neoseeker has one. Those little chunks of flash memory that you can pop into a USB port, drag some files to, and then drop in your pocket - they're great. No longer must we be subject to the now nearly dead floppy disc (though I still have a stack of them next to my computer). Burning a CD or DVD is fine, but it can be slow. Not to mention, it's a bit of a waste for only a few megabytes in files.

Recently, OCZ sent us their Mini-Kart USB 2.0 thumb drive which features dimensions that are near postage stamp size, and can hold up to a gigabyte of files. The drive is very similar in design to the PQI I-Stick from just over a year ago, coming in at the maximum thinness possible for a USB device while keeping its width and length in close check as well.

We're going to take a few minutes to inspect, test, and interrogate this little wonder to see how it fares against some the other (larger) options on the market. We reviewed another OCZ thumb drive last year (in fact their only other thumbdrive) - the OCZ Rally which was at the time of testing, the fastest USB flash drive to be had. While the Rally was aimed at pumping data as quickly as possible, the Mini-Kart is designed firstly to be small, with raw performance taking a back seat this time around.

We've cleaned out our USB ports and found some files to transfer. Let's discover what the OCZ Mini-Kart 1GB USB2.0 thumb drive holds in the way of features and performance.