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Just in time for the holiday buying season, Intel Corporation has lowered prices and introduced a new model of its award-winning Intel Solid-State Drive (SSD) product line. SSDs can replace hard disk drives in a PC and provide a substantial performance boost for a notebook or desktop PC, making SSDs one of the hottest new waves in personal computing.
For shoppers looking for the latest high-tech gadget for that intensive PC user or gamer, Intel SSDs can help improve overall system performance by up to 56 percent. SSDs can replace or complement a traditional hard drive in a notebook or desktop PC and deliver noticeably faster computer performance when booting up, opening files and running software applications. With no moving parts, these SSDs deliver greater reliability and consume less power than conventional hard disk drives (HDDs).
“Every Christmas, consumers are looking for the latest tech gadget; this year, with prices dropping, the solid-state drive is becoming more mainstream and can make the single greatest improvement to PC performance,” said Troy Winslow, director of product marketing for the Intel NAND Solutions Group. “With an SSD, tech shoppers can give the gift of a technology makeover that will help speed up, or breathe new life, into a current PC by just swapping out the hard drive for an SSD.”
New suggested U.S. resell pricing for the Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD is now $199 for an 80 gigabyte (GB) drive, which provides plenty of space to store the operating system, multiple office and personal applications, as well as thousands of songs, photos, video and other data. Users can double the storage capacity with a 160GB X25-M drive for $415. The company has also added a new 120GB version of the Intel X25-M for $249, which offers the best dollar-per-GB value in the Intel X25-M SSD line.
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Micro Center, one of the nation's leading computer retailers, announced today the availability of their second generation Solid State Drive (SSD) featuring the SandForce SF-1200 Processor from SandForce Inc., the pioneer of SSD Processors that enable standard NAND Flash deployment in enterprise, client, and industrial computing applications. The latest Micro Center branded 64GB SSD leverages innovative SandForce DuraClass technology to provide enterprise-class capabilities for cost-sensitive client PC and laptop applications with a low $99.99 introductory price tag.
"We're excited to offer Micro Center customers our second generation, high performance solid state drive with the top-rated controller in the industry—the SandForce SF-1200 Processor," said Ed Mershad, Micro Center Vice President and International Products Sourcing Manager. "We think the combination of great Micro Center support and service, award winning SandForce technology, and an introductory $99.99 price will open the door to mass-market adoption of SSDs in client PC and laptop applications."
The Micro Center 64GB SSD SATA II 2.5" G2 Series SSD with SandForce SF-1200 Series Controller is now available in all 23 locations across the nation as well as the easy-to-use online catalog. Key features include read and write speeds over 250MB/sec, DuraWrite technology to extend the life of the drive, RAISE™ technology for RAID-like data security in a single drive environment, and ultra-low power mode to maximize battery life.
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- Duplicators
Rimage Corporation, the industry-leading provider of on-demand CD/DVD/Blu-ray Disc publishing systems, has introduced the patent-pending Rimage 5400N Disc Copy Station, a new system designed to copy CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray Discs with the ease of a paper copier. The 5400N Disc Copy Station is now available for order through Rimage’s Value Added Reseller network.
Optical discs are increasingly replacing paper documents in business workflows. Often, this drives a need in companies of all sizes for functional replicates of original discs for documentation management, data distribution or the replacement of lost discs.
The 5400N Disc Copy Station makes creating working copies of existing discs as simple as inserting a disc to be copied into the system and pressing the “Copy” button. The Disc Copy Station photographs the disc label, reads the contents, records the contents on a blank disc, and prints a near-perfect replica of the original disc label. Multiple working copies of the original disc can be created as one job. This automated process eliminates the complex task of finding the original label and contents, creating or purchasing the original label from a past supplier, or manually writing information on the disc. Using the Disc Copy Station is faster than manual alternatives, which often tie up skilled professionals for hours.
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Apricorn today announced the introduction of its Mac Array, an easy-to-install, turnkey solution for instantly increasing your Mac Pro's processing power. Designed specifically for Apple Mac Pro systems, the Apricorn Mac Array internal SSD RAID bridges the gap between your computer's high capacity yet slow hard drive and your system's RAM, acting as virtual memory, for a performance increase of up to 10 times. Aimed at the ever growing creative market, the Mac Array is the ideal tool for high performance applications such as video editing, animation and image processing, providing a measurable performance increase that can slash render times to a mere fraction of the usual time.
Built around four high performance 128GB solid state drives on Apricorn's specially designed SATA PCIe Host Card, the Mac Array's unique form factor adds a total of 512GB of virtual memory to your system, yet uses only one internal full length PCIe X4 slot, keeping the other slots and drive bays free for expansion. Fully configurable, the Mac Array can be used singularly or for the ultimate boost - in tandem with a second or even third Mac Array for even greater performance.
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QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers today expanded their hugely popular Business Series Turbo NAS lineup with the addition of a new 8-drive desktop model, TS-859 Pro+ Turbo NAS. The TS-859 Pro+ incorporates Intel's new D525 dual-core Atom CPU with 1.8GHz clock speed and 1GB RAM, which can achieve up to 116MB/s transfer rates (FTP/Samba reads) while maintaining guaranteed lower power consumption. The Turbo NAS provides up to 16TB of extremely large storage capacity (using 2TB hard drives and single disk volume/JBOD configuration), and is targeted for business users and workgroups who need a tower server to fit in their office environment for backup and sharing of enormous amount of documents, digital pictures, videos, and applications.
Meanwhile, the TS-859 Pro+ has been certified as compatible NFS and iSCSI datastore with fully VMware Ready, Citrix Ready and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V clusters compliant. QNAP continues its industry-leading iSCSI support for server clustering and virtualized environments including support for MC/S, MPIO, SPC-3, and thin provisioning. With built-in iSCSI initiator and target service, network storage can be virtually expanded by simply adding additional QNAP Turbo NAS units to the network and adding virtual volumes, up to 8 per device.
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Plextor, a leading brand of high-performance digital media solutions, announces a new 24X DVD writer in Europe. The PX-L890SA is a highly accurate internal DVD RW developed for high quality DVD and CD burning. It has been designed with a rigid chassis and multiple dampers to absorb vibrations ensuring recording quality and stability, even at maximum 24X. Specially designed airflow paths cool the motor and other heat producing components extending the operational life of the drive.
The drive is bundled with Nero 9 Essentials software and Plextor's own PlexUtilities and also incorporates LightScribe direct disc labeling.
The key features of recording accuracy, speed and powerful utility software make the PX-L890SA an essential choice for any purchaser requiring precise DVD burning.
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Super Talent Technology,a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced two new drives to their successful Pico Series, the Pico Mini C and the Pico Mini D.
USB flash drives have become an indispensible PC peripheral; there's just no better way to take your data from one PC to another. Having a USB flash drive close at hand has become critical for personal productivity. The new Pico Mini C and D were designed to be small enough to carry with you at all times. Each design comes with a clever and convenient way to protect the electrical contacts when not in use.
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Other World Computing announced today it has added four new 750GB 7200 RPM models to its award-winning OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro™ bus powered portable storage solution line. The Mercury On-The-Go Pro is a high-performance, pocket-sized portable storage solution for Mac or PC users featuring FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 3.0 and/or USB 2.0 interfaces for real world data transfer speeds up to 170MB/s. Available with up to 1.0TB of storage capacity, the Mercury On-The-Go Pro can hold up to one million JPEG photos, 500 DVD movies, 76 hours of digital video, or 350,000 MP3 songs.
The Mercury On-The-Go Pro 750GB 7200RPM line features four models, including a “Triple Interface” model for FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0; a “Combo Interface” model for FireWire 400 and USB 2.0; a USB 3.0 “SuperSpeed” model for USB 3/2.0 Backwards; and a USB 2.0 model all available immediately priced from $134.99 from Other World Computing at www.macsales.com. In addition to the newest models, Mercury On-The-Go Pro models are available with up to 1.0TB in 5400RPM models and also available with Solid State Drives (SSD) with models currently up to 240GB.
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AC Ryan announced this week that it is expanding the groundbreaking Playon! series to include the Playon!HD Essential. Setting a new standard of performance in the class of no network media players, this inexpensive, user friendly, no network media player supports the most file formats including Blu-ray and DVD ISO.
The Playon!HD Essential delivers to the world of entry level no network media players, all the benefits that make AC Ryan the No.1 brand in media players. AC Ryan is responding to the broader, mass market consumer demand for user friendly, no network, no fuss media players. Currently only sub-standard products exist in this range, nowthe Playon!HD Essential is here to change that with the most extensive file format support and the highest quality output.
The Playon!HD Essential allows users to store and enjoy all of their precious movies, music and photos in the comfort of their own living room. Free your media content from the limitations of the PC and let the Playon!HD Essential bring them to life in Full HD quality on your TV. The Playon!HD Essential is designed for users who prefer an easy to use media player without the fuss of networking.
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Plextor, a leading brand of high-performance digital media solutions, announces a new 12X BD writer in Europe. The PX-LB950SA is an exceptional high-speed Blu-ray writer, providing both smooth high-definition video playback and large-capacity data storage. It is able to record a 25GB single-layer disc in unprecedented 12 minutes and offers a substantial 50GB of data storage on a double layer Blu-ray disc, making the PX-LB950SA the ideal device for high-definition video and other data applications.
Every aspect of the PX-LB950SA has been designed for data recording accuracy at 12X, while simultaneously reducing operational noise and vibrations. The drive is provided with PowerDVD 9 BD Suite, which incorporates a full range of flexible software tools for 3D Blu-ray playback and standard Blu-ray and DVD playback and recording. In addition, the powerful PlexUtilities software, of comprehensive test tool, media information, drive information, and drive tuning system, is also included. And with LightScribe direct disc labeling, users can burn customized labels on any LightScribe compatible discs.
