Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., announced today it is shipping the first two products in its SSDNow line of solid-state drives (SSD) with the SSDNow E Series and SSDNow M Series. Kingston is targeting its SSDs to Fortune 1000 companies and select vertical markets. The SSDNow E Series is specifically designed for the enterprise server environment while the SSDNow M Series is built for the road warrior who demands ultimate performance from a notebook PC. The Kingston SSDNow E and M Series use Intel's solid-state drives, which are the best-performing drives on the market.

"We are thrilled to enter the solid-state drive market with our SSDNow E and M Series SSDs. The combination of the fastest SSDs in the world along with Kingston's tremendous distribution capabilities and legendary customer service will position us to succeed in this arena," said Mark Leathem, director of Flash business development, Kingston Digital. "The performance capabilities of these first two offerings are off the charts and our enterprise customers will be very pleased to use them in servers and corporate laptop computers."

Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. today debuts the new Pioneer® DV-420V 1080p upconverting DVD player, which is the first to feature an exclusive MP3 encoding capability for supreme music portability. Combining HDMI™ connectivity with advanced multi-format playback, Pioneer’s new player is an ideal source device for secondary room settings. Extremely compact in size, the DV-420V features a length of only 16.5-inches providing maximum features in an extremely slim profile for a seamless fit in any room space.

Verbatim Americas, LLC, announced today that it is shipping the world’s first LightScribe® 8X DVD+R Double Layer (DL) discs.  The new media provides consumers and businesses with 8.5GB capacity on the DVD’s storage side and direct-to-disc burning of silkscreen-quality text and graphics on the label side.  At 8X speed, the industry’s fastest DVD DL burning speed, an entire 8.5GB single-sided disc can be filled to capacity in 15 minutes or less. 

The new media leverages many of the same technologies that set the standard for high-speed DVD+R Double Layer (DL) disc performance, reliability and compatibility.  Verbatim and its parent company, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM), have consistently been at the forefront in developing DVD+R DL technologies and LightScribe media coating.  Verbatim was also the first company to release DVD+R DL discs and LightScribe media worldwide.

SanDisk sent out a press release today, announcing its G3 Series of solid-state drives (SSDs). These MLC-based SSDs are available in 60, 120 and 240GB capacities and are capable of 200MB/s read and 140MB/s write speeds.

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today unveiled its third-generation family of solid-state drives (SSDs). Using multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory technology, SanDisk’s G3 Series establishes new benchmarks in performance and price-performance leadership in the SSD industry.

Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs) in notebook PCs, the initial members in the SanDisk G3 family are SSD C25-G3 and SSD C18-G3 in the standard 2.5” and 1.8” form factors respectively, each available with a SATA-II interface. Available in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB*, the unit MSRPs are $149, $249 and $499, respectively.