My first USB flash drive was $70. That was for 256mb of storage. Nowadays, you can get 4gb for less than that if you shop around a bit. Yea, it was expensive, but it sure beat carrying around 5 different floppies, which generally broke when you had that important paper due. My point is, that for a relatively little amount of money, you can get enormous amounts of storage in your pocket. Franklin is, somewhat at least, taking advantage of that and shipping a copy of the Merriam Webster dictionary on a memory stick.

I said they’re only somewhat taking advantage of that because of how little storage they pack into this thing–only 256mb. Honestly, that’s just pitiful for this day and age, and remember, your dictionary takes up space to. So in reality, you’re only getting about 50-75% of that.

Alright, enough negativity. I’ll try to be positive and tell you about the features. The on board dictionary program has 300,000 definitions, and 500,000 synonyms + antonyms. Some of the different programs are actually pretty nifty. It has phonetic spell correction, which lets you type in word how it sounds and it will spell it properly for you (e.g nolige = knowledge). There’s also a Confusables function, which checks word usage (e.g. their vs. there), and for the cheaters, a crossword puzzle solver. I’ll admit it, I’m one of those dirty cheaters. On the rare days I actually attempt the crossword puzzle I end up searching Wikipedia and IMDB for a good 10 minutes, then giving up.

While I think the whole programs + data is a really great idea, this implementation isn’t the best. Mainly because there’s simply not enough space. 256mb is laughable these days, 1gb would’ve been acceptable. $30.

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