You could say it's a simple evolutionary step for thumb drives, but I think it's a welcome one. There is of course the talk of USB 3.0, with speeds up to 400MB/s, however it will be some time before the hardware to use that is available, let alone common. As it stands, every new computer has sata ports, which are easy enough to convert into eSata. There is no denying the speed you can have here and now. Not to mention for $30 (8GB), it's only about $8 more than a regular 8GB usb drive, that for 3X the performance. If you don't mind carrying a USB cable (that is used for practically all external 2.5" drives as well), you aren't going to be able to find anything faster in this size, or price range.