OCZ Technology has officially announced its new Apex Series solid state drives (SSDs). These affordable midrange offerings feature an updated controller design, internal RAID 0 architecture, and 230MB/sec read and 160MB/sec write speeds.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled the OCZ Apex SATA II 2.5” Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, the affordable midrange offering for enthusiasts, system builders, and mainstream computer users demanding the latest technology in this fast-developing sector of the storage market. This cost-efficient SSD offers a reliable upgrade from traditional hard disc storage while maintaining a price point that is truly within the reach of a wide range of consumers.

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."

The 1TB Nitro SSD is the most compact SSD per gigabyte: 15.40GB per cubic centimeter in a 2.5-inch form-factor -- at least three times greater than any other SSD on the market. This high density in a small form factor has been achieved through innovative engineering techniques coupled with advanced industrial design that yields an exceptionally thin enclosure.

This Nitro line of high-performance solid-state drives is designed for applications where data throughput and power consumption are paramount: server, networking, datacenter, supercomputing, and professional media. These applications require fast transfer speeds and involve the storage of massive amounts of data. pureSilicon has benchmarked these drives at speeds approaching the maximum bus speed of SATA II (300 MB/s).

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.