Hardware
The hardware itself was packed in 2 cardboard boxes, padded with plastic and/or
more cardboard. The boxes contained the sticks, a leaflet with the features
of the stick and a carrying cord. The white stick was accompanied by a small
user-manual (which comes in E-book-format on the silver one), the silver
one has an USB extension cord as an extra.
The documentation of none of the two sticks mentioned something about
self-destruction features, so I figured it should be safe to open their
casings to see what was inside. The casings themselves weren't too hard to
open, but sturdy enough to survive yer olde' average
oops-I-dropped-my-stick-type of fall. Anyway, this is what is in the
plastic enclosures:
Both sticks contain a not-too-fancy USB-to-flash-and-finger-sensor-chip, 1GB of
NAND-flash and a finger-sensor. The sensor itself seems to work by using
the conduction of your finger: wiping a piece of plastic over it didn't make
the software think a finger was present, while wiping a wet piece of cloth
over it, did.