When the Beatles' oeuvre was first transferred to digital media, fans were upset at the lackluster conversion that left much of their work -- especially the later albums -- sounding flat and lifeless in comparison to their analog counterparts. The recent digital remastering of the entire Beatles catalog took advantage of the vastly improved digital mastering technologies since those original CD releases, and now they've gone one step further: doing away with the CD medium all together.

No, there's still no Beatles on the iTunes store, but there's still an apple involved. Dig the EMI / Apple Records released Beatles Ltd USB Stick (£200.00 from the Beatles online store). . . so the name could use some work, but this healthy-looking jump drive contains the entire remastered Beatles catalog. That's fourteen albums if you count the "Past Masters" collection.

The 16 GB flash drive includes a special PC and Mac interface for easily transferring the music to your computer, and is available in both FLAC 44.1 Khz 24 bit or MP3 320 Kbps formats for compatibility with nearly every portable digital music player.

The Beatles Ltd USB Stick is, as implied, available in limited quantities.