I recently picked up a 5 pack of cheap 2 GB HP USB memory sticks (what I call “fobs”).

My intention was to take the fob and embed it into a steampunk body. It is going to be a gift for my sister and would end up looking something like one of these:

(The above is an example. It’s not mine.)

So, the first thing I needed to do was to crack open the case and see how big of a space I’d need. I figured at worst it would be the same size as the plastic case, but maybe I’d get lucky.

And I started prying. And trimming. And peeking with a flashlight. And look what I discovered:

Yep, most of that plastic is just empty airspace. That metal can thing (half of which gets stuffed into your computer’s USB port) is all it takes to store the 2 GB of data.

This pretty clearly illustrates how memory sizes have come down. A couple of years ago that case would have been stuffed with memory chips. Now the connector takes more space than the memory. Good news for me, who wants to put the memory into a brand new case. (Note that if you have an older fob it might not be so empty — you have been warned. Start by being careful, and then if you see air space, start cutting.)

This got me thinking: ReadyBoost. See, I recently picked up a Toshiba netbook with 1 GB of RAM. I didn’t want to spend more coin on a memory upgrade, so I thought that ReadyBoost would be an option. This Windows 7 (and Vista) feature allows you to use USB memory sticks as additional cache space, effectively giving the machine 3 GB of RAM to work with. And given the sluggish 5400 RPM hard drives in most laptops, more memory is a good thing.

Trouble is, the USB fobs stick out too far, risking me breaking them off. Well, now that’s a lot less likely with a case-less USB memory stick:

It sticks out about 1/2″ — which is certainly better than the 1 3/4″ a regular fob would have stuck out. We’ll see how it helps. (Not that the Netbook is sluggish — Windows 7 runs very well on it.)

Now that I’ve confirmed how small these buggers are, I’ll start crafting a steampunk case for one.