We obviously don’t pay enough attention to Buffalo and I’m not entirely sure why, but the mighty herd out of Japan has announced the SHD-UHRS line of SSDs. Big deal, right? It can’t get any bigger than 64GB. *Buzz* Buffalo is dropping a 100GB SSD on your ass at the end of the month. The only downside is that it’s USB so you won’t be installing the baby behemoth into your rig. That’s pretty sweet and all, but an $885 price tag may deter some folks from picking one up. Product Page → Read More
The conventional notebook hard drive continues to face down its inevitable replacement as Toshiba today announced that it’ll be entering into the solid state drive game. Mass production will begin in March of next year with 1.8-inch SATA drives being offered in 32-, 64-, and 128-gigabyte capacities. Throughput for the drives will be 3Gbps with a maximum write speed of 40MB/second and a maximum read speed of 100MB/second. No word yet on prices but the more of these drives that hit the market, the cheaper they’ll cost. Toshiba Launches High Performance Solid State Drives with MLC Devices [Press Release] → Read More
This morning, Samsung announced it would begin shipping its new 1.8-inch 64GB SSD. That’s 64GB of porn data that can be accessed very quickly. Some of the features that make this SSD pop include faster startup times, skip-proof data protection, since there’s no moving parts, and extended product life. It also uses less power, meaning there’s no need to scoop up that 600W power supply you saw on sale last week. Since the drive is aimed at UMPC and tablet PC manufacturers, no price has been given. But since SSDs aren’t that commonplace yet, I’m assuming it doesn’t come that cheap. Perhaps three years down the road these will be a dime-a-dozen, but not today. → Read More
At Computex Taipei 2007, SanDisk showed off its two new additions to its line of solid state drives (SSD): SanDisk 1.8-inch 64GB UATA 5000 and 2.5-inch 64GB SATA 5000 SSD products. This was trumped by PNY’s announcement of a 2.5-inch 128GB SSD. SanDisk and PNY are stating read speeds of 67MBps and 66MBps, respectively. How’s that for fast boot times and file access, eh? Neither company lists prices for the drives since they seem to be only going to OEMs right now. PNY sells its 32GB drive at around $350 for large volume orders, so you do the math. Also, don’t expect the PNY drives till third quarter 2007 (its 128GB drives I mean, the 32GB models are currently shipping). SanDisk’s new 64GB models, however, are available now. PNY Technologies Debuts Solid State Drive Lineup [press release] SanDisk SSD Solid State Drives [product page] → Read More
What could be better than waking up at the crack of dawn and finding out that there is an LED-backlit laptop? A lot of things, actually, but it would be nice if the Japanese tech overlords would send us the latest VAIO. We’re all frothing over the highly rumored LED Macbook. Sony would make a killing, but they put their heads so far up their butts’ years ago that it will never happen. → Read More
Anyone with $4000 to shell out and a hankering for a new laptop should take note of this beautiful new notebook from HP and Maybach. Though it does come after Ferrari and Lamborghini made laptops with Asus and Acer, the Maybach laptop seems to be a whole new ball game. Equipped with what looks like a snakeskin leather trim and a Maybach logo on the front, this notebook truly is feature rich. It comes with Intel Core 2 Duo, built-in SSD-storage of 64GB (yes, solid state), and sensory buttons with ambient lighting. Worth the money? Far from it, but elitists can still pick one up if they choose to do so. Expect a limited-run from HP before they realize no one cares. Maybach notebook – HP Maybach ns42 [New Launches] → Read More
SanDisk feels it’s ready to take on the mobile PC market with its first solid-state hard drive. The SSD Ultra ATA 5000 1.8-inch hard drive comes in a 32GB size and can boot Windows Vista Enterprise in under 35 seconds. This drive is being touted for its speed, thanks to solid-state memory instead of moving parts like a conventional hard drive. The geeky-goo from the press release: ” With no moving parts, SanDisk SSD does not need to spin up into action or to seek files in the way that conventional hard disk drives do – enabling SanDisk SSD to work much faster. SanDisk SSD Ultra ATA 5000 achieves a sustained read rate of 62-megabyte (MB)*/sec and a random read rate of 7300 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer – more than 100 times better than any hard disk drive. These performance figures boost system performance. For instance, SanDisk SSD UATA 5000 can boot Microsoft Windows® Vista™ Enterprise on a laptop in as little as 35 seconds. SanDisk SSD achieves an average file access rate of 0.12 milliseconds.** On Windows Experience Index for Microsoft® Vista™, SanDisk SSD scores 5.4 out of a total 5.9, whereas a hard disk drive scores 3.7 on the same test inside the same laptop.*** “ Oh, and your laptop will get a longer battery life if you slap one of these SSD Ultra drives into it. This drive only uses 0.4W while active as opposed to 1.0W on standard hard disks. Less power consumed means more juice. Everybody wins. No word yet on how much this’ll cost or when bigger sizes will become available. Official Site [SanDisk] → Read More
Samsung goodness just keeps rolling along. In Korea, the manufacturer of all things slick has announced it’s going to put Solid State Drive notebooks into production, and already have the specs of one on its Korean website. For those not in the know, SSD (Solid State Disk) notebooks run the operating system out of NAND RAM, the same memory that your iPod Nano or digital camera uses. This type of memory has several advantages over traditional hard drives, such as lighter weight, lower power consumption, no moving parts (less to break) and faster read/write speeds. The overall effect on its new Q30 SSD notebook is that they would be faster, lighter, last longer per charge and be less prone to data-loss. Not a bad upgrade at all. It’s not certain that these new notebooks are headed to the States, but you can be sure that in the next year you’ll start seeing SSD notebooks of some sort on US store shelves. World’s first NAND powered notebook [Gadgetell] → Read More
PQI Turbo Industrial has announced the release of its new 32GB solid state drive. It utilizes Samsung NANDs for its storage. The drive comes in 2.5″ or 1.5″ sizes. It is currently compatible with IDE, but PQI says the SATA model will be available in the next couple of weeks. You can order it now for a mere $1799. A 64GB model (shown) will be available in September. → Read More
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