WD® today announced that it has begun shipping its new SiliconDrive® III SSD product family based on technology from its March 2009 acquisition of SiliconSystems. The company's new SiliconDrive III products feature faster read/write speeds and increased capacities, and offer mechanical scalability, making them a perfect storage solution for embedded system and data streaming applications such as multimedia content delivery systems and data center media appliances.

SiliconDrive III SSDs include 2.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) and Parallel ATA (PATA) and 1.8-inch Micro SATA products featuring native SATA 3.0 gigabits per second (Gbps) or ATA-7 interfaces with target read speeds up to 100 megabytes per second (MBps) and write speeds to 80 MBps in capacities up to 120 gigabytes (GB).

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While the popularity of Blu-ray is on the rise, this high-def format hasn't been able to make up for declining DVD rentals and sales. According to a study by Screen Digest, global revenues dropped by 4.8% in 2008, resulting in a loss of $2.6 billion. Also, due to the current economic climate, Senior analysts at Screen Digest also don't expect Blu-ray to drive even minimal sector growth until 2010.

The global video business lost more than $2.6bn in 2008 due to a combination of a fall in both DVD purchase and rentals by consumers. The figure, which equates to a downturn of 4.8 percent globally, is published in the latest report from Screen Digest (www.screendigest.com). Whilst the decline in North American DVD sales is well documented, the decline in international markets (global excluding North America) has received less coverage.

Internationally last year consumers spent $26.4bn on video software, with two thirds of that figure ($18.1bn) spent on buying DVD discs. The overall figure represents a 3.6% drop on 2007 spend and a 4.7% drop on disc sales alone. The sales figures are in line with the overall trend which saw consumer spending plateau between 2004 and 2007 and the North American market starting to decline in 2007 which signalled the start of a global downward trend.

In addition to its memory module and graphic card products, PNY Technologies launches today a new collection of SSD (Solid State Drives) to complete its memory upgrade offering.

Over the last few years, SSD’s have become an ideal and efficient drop-in replacement for the traditional hard disk drive (HDD) often used with laptops and desktop computers. These drives offer significant advantages, including better shock resistance, no mechanical wear and tear (thanks to the fact that there are no moving parts) and unrivalled speed.

This range of PNY High Speed Optima SSD’s is faster, more robust and more reliable than the majority of SSD drives on the market. Moreover, PNY has selected high quality Flash memory with MLC (Multi Layer Cell) technology. The major benefit of these SSD drives lies in extremely high performance levels, with a 200 Mb/sec write speed and a 220 Mb/sec read speed.

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Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the release of the DataTraveler® 200 (DT200), the world's first 128GB USB Flash drive. The large capacity along with password protection gives users the flexibility to carry critical data with them at all times in a very small form factor.

"The new DT200's robust storage capability lets consumers store complete libraries of music, photos and videos. It is also a great tool for business users who carry around large databases or files," said Andrew Ewing, USB business manager, Kingston®. "The password protection helps safeguard data and requires no admin rights, making the DT200 a terrific solution for the home or office."

The Kingston DataTraveler 200 features a capless design to protect the USB connector when not in use and is enhanced for Windows ReadyBoost™. It is available in 32-, 64- and 128GB capacities. The 128GB drive is build-to-order only. Customers who wish to purchase it can place an order through normal channels (e.g., e-tailers or resellers).

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