Copy Box addresses a major drawback of USB ports: the fact that, unlike rival Firewire, they don't support peer-to-peer links. You can't swap tracks between mp3 players, for instance, or dump images directly from a camera to a USB disk.

The problem should disappear as new products adopt an extension to the USB2 specification called USB on-the-go (OTG). This allows one of two linked devices to mimic a host PC; the other one does not need to support the technology.

Copy Box goes one further by allowing you to copy files between USB devices when neither supports OTG. Both have to be addressable as USB drives, however.

Copy Box would not work directly with an HP Photosmart 945 camera, which uses proprietary PC software, although it happily copied files from a USB adapter containing the 945's SD card. It also liked the Epson L-500V, which a PC sees as a removable drive.

The size and weight (minus its three AAA batteries) of a pack of playing cards, Copy Box has both the advantages and drawbacks of simplicity.

You plug the source device into one side and the target into the other, press a button and a red light flashes until all files have been copied over. The transfer rate between USB2 devices was just under 6Mbits/sec in our tests, however, which is what we'd expect for a USB1.1 link.

But there is no listing screen, so you have to trust the status lights. There is no Move option, which cuts the risk of losing files but means you have to delete manually, if you can, to clear a source device and you can copy a subset of files only if your source device allows you to create a directory for them.

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