Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, confirmed at Macworld today its OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G SSD is now available in a 480GB model size for the latest Apple MacBook Air 11.1" and 13.3" models which incorporate 6G (6Gb/s) data rate capabilities. The new Mercury Aura Pro Express 480GB model combines award-winning SandForce technologies and Tier 1/Grade A Toggle Synchronous NAND to deliver data rates up to 3x faster than factory 3G (3Gb/s) options and up to 8x the storage capacity of the factory's base 64GB SSD model. The new, built-in-the-USA Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD and other OWC Mercury SSDs will be shown in Other World Computing's booth #513, Moscone Centerl, at Macworld held in San Francisco this week.

Mac-loving company Other World Computing (OWC) has recently revealed a new line of high-grade solid state drives, the Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G. Designed for 'mission-critical deployments', these 2.5-inch SSDs feature a SandForce 2582 controller, Toshiba-made Enterprise Toggle Synchronous (eMLC) NAND memory chips, a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface, and OWC's Paratus Power Technology which prevents data loss in the case of power interruptions.

OWC's drives also have chip-based 256-bit AES encryption, they deliver sustained read/write speeds of up to 550/525 MB/s, and are capable of a random 4K read/write performance of up to 60,000 IOPS. The Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G drives are backed by a seven-year warranty and will ship by the end of this quarter in 50 GB ($629), 100 GB ($799), 200 GB ($1,349) and 400 GB ($2,199) capacities.

As part of its Spring refresh, Panasonic will roll out not only the 12.1-inch Let's note NX and SX Series laptops mentioned yesterday, but also an up-to-date Let's note J10. The J10 is a 10.1-inch mini notebook that comes with a 720p display (1366 x 768-pixel resolution) and makes use of a Core i3 or i5 processor (no Atom on this little guy).

The updated J10 also features 4 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive or 128 GB solid state drive, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, WiMAX, an SD card slot, USB 3.0 connectivity, and a HDMI output.

The 'standard' J10 model, boasting a 2.3 GHz Core i3-2350M CPU and a 250 GB HDD, is expected to cost about $1,546, while the 'high performance' J10, with a 2.4 GHz Core i5-2435M and a 128 GB SSD, should go for $2,192. Both models will ship in Japan in late February.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced the release of new enhanced IOPS firmware (v1.13) for the Octane SATA 3.0 Series SSDs. The random write performance has been significantly improved, in some capacities over double that of the previous specifications, for users looking to push their SSD performance to new heights.

For all Octane SATA 6Gb/s models, the improved IOPS made possible by this new firmware allow for greater transactional performance, especially during small file and random access speeds in everyday computing applications. When compared to the previous revision, random write IOPS performance doubles across nearly all capacities when tested in IOmeter 2008:

Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:MU), and Virtensys Ltd. today announced that the companies have signed an agreement for Micron to acquire the assets of privately held Virtensys, a provider of PCIe-sharing solutions based in Manchester, England and Beaverton, Ore.

The transaction would further strengthen Micron's enterprise storage portfolio by combining Virtensys' award-winning PCIe virtualization technology with Micron's solid state drives (SSDs), enabling data centers to share local storage across multiple servers.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the latest addition to its SSDNow family, the SSDNow V+200. The new Kingston SSDNow V+200 solid-state drives are the ideal high-performance upgrade solution for the performance minded yet cost-conscious business or home user.

The SSDNow V+200 features the second-generation high-speed SATA 3.0 (6 Gb/s) SandForce SF-2281 Processor and outstanding sequential read and write speeds of up to 535 MB/s and 480 MB/s. The SSDNow V+200 enables fast system start-up, rapid data access and speedy copying of large files such as videos, presentations and graphics illustrations.

pureSilicon Inc., innovator of high-performance storage technology for the industry's most demanding applications, has launched a new line of enterprise-focused storage devices that give IT administrators high-performance options for power users.

The new Kage Series comprises the Kage K1 USB Flash Drive - an "impossibly thin" (4.5 mm) USB 3.0-based SSD drive that redefines portable performance and capacity for mobile enterprise and prosumer users; and the Kage K1 SATA SSD that leverages the advanced technology pioneered in pureSilicon's recently announced Renegade and Nitro devices, making it available at a lower price point aimed at power users in the financial services, science, and engineering sectors, as well as creative professionals who need fast, high-capacity storage for digital media.

If gaming-console manufacturers want to stifle innovation in the gaming industry with old, archaic hardware, it's time for game PC vendors to do something to woo the console crowd. Dell's flagship gaming PC brand, Alienware, announced the X51, a gaming desktop built around the size of a typical gaming console, but packing today's computing technologies that PC gamers have access to. It starts at US $699. Its chassis measures 343 x 95 x 318 mm (HxWxD), and can be oriented vertically, or horizontally. It features cutting-edge styling by Alienware with dashes of piano black, matte black, and lime. Its front features audio, USB ports, and a slot-in DVD-RW / Blu-ray ROM (optional).

The $699 base model is driven by an Intel Core i3 dual-core processor, though more powerful Core i5 and Core i7 processors can be opted for. Graphics is handled by NVIDIA GeForce GT 545, though GT 555 can be opted for. 4 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory comes standard, up to 8 GB can be opted for. 1 TB 7200rpm HDD storage comes out of the box, faster SSDs can be opted for. Connectivity includes 7.1-channel HD audio with Waves MAXX Audio Software, gigabit Ethernet, Wireless b/g/n, optical and coaxial SPDIF audio outputs. The graphics card gives out HDMI and DVI outputs. Yes, it can run Crysis.

BiTMICRO Networks, a manufacturer of high-end enterprise Solid State Drive (SSD) technologies, and Global Unichip Corporation (GUC), the Flexible ASIC Leader, have successfully taped out a third generation SSD controller. Dubbed as TALINO-DE (Translation and Linking of I/O Nodes - Device Edition), this multi-core SSD controller provides high-speed data transfer between host and storage device. TALINO-DE is seen to be a generation ahead of today's market-leading technology.

TALINO-DE features multiple embedded CPUs, high-speed serial on-chip buses and proprietary integrated data moving technology, enabling parallel access to hundreds of flash chips. Other features include full data path protection, end-to-end data integrity, embedded AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) engines for data security, embedded XOR engines for delivering faster transaction processing in RAID configurations, power management, and other resource optimization.

Over last weekend, Crucial released a new firmware update for its M4 series SSDs, which aims to fix several blue screen of death (BSOD) issues that users are facing. Crucial's investigation into the BSOD complaints revealed that a bug in the older firmware caused the drives to become unstable after 5,184 hours of operation. After that, every hour the previously-rock-stable drives cause BSODs. The firmware update only applies to drives connected to SATA hosts, and not SAS expanders. Crucial is still working on a firmware update for drives connected via SAS expanders.DOWNLOAD: 0309 Firmware Update for Crucial M4

KINGMAX, a world renowned leading brand of DRAM and flash memory, has launched the latest 2.5" SATA III 6Gb/s based SSD series targeting high performance users. The KINGMAX SMP32 Client and SMU32 Client Pro SSD feature the new generation SandForce controller that support SATA 6GB/s for the best performances and deliver read speed up to 550 MB/sec and write speed at 520MB/sec, thus it only takes a few seconds to boot in your operation system.

KINGMAX SSD SATA III Client series equipped with highly reliable SandForce controller supporting SATA III 6Gb/s interface to extend the lifetime of NAND Flash chips and the durability of SSD. Supporting RAISE fault-tolerant technology and ECC error correction technology to prevent errors caused by the volume of data loss, strengthen the data security inside it, and upgrade the computing performance. Moreover the data read and write times will be significantly reduced to extend the durability and lifetime of SSD.

Japanese company Orange Systems announced a new modular PCI Express SSD, the "Wings" series, which is a collection of products: the PCIe SSD card, its SSD subunits that have to be purchased separately, and those subunits in hard cases that turn them into 2.5-inch simple SSDs. To begin with, Angelbird has three PCIe SSD main card variants: "Lite", 16 GB, and 32 GB. These cards are basically PCI Express x4 SATA 3 Gb/s RAID cards that have SATA power+data interfaces on the card. The 16 GB and 32 GB cards have a localized SSD subunit on the board, while the "lite" variant has no localized subunit, and relies entirely on attached subunits.

These subunits are basically 2.5-inch SSD PCBs stripped of their cases, which Orange Systems refers to as Wings Expansion Cartridges, which are basically SandForce SF-1220 driven SSDs with MLC NAND flash, available in capacities of 60 GB, 115 GB, and 240 GB. When attached in pairs to the Wings PCIe SSD card, the card's main controller runs them in a RAID 0 configuration that is abstract to the host, delivering increased performance. Lastly, these "Expansion Cartridges" are available with their outer shells, branded as "Crest SSDs".

Patriot Memory displayed its four main client bare-PCB SSD lines, the Industrial Series mSATA, Industrial Series half-height-mSATA, 1.8-inch half-height Industrial Series, and Mac Series SSD-stick. All three Industrial Series products are driven by PHISON controllers, and are available in MLC NAND flash and SLC NAND flash variants, each with its own capacity options. The mSATA MLC is available in capacities ranging from 16 GB to 128 GB, mSATA SLC from 4 GB to 32 GB; mSATA half-height MLC from 4 GB to 32 GB, mSATA half-height SLC from 1 GB to 8 GB.

The "Slim SATA" (half-height 1.8-inch) MLC is available in capacities ranging from 16 GB to 128 GB, and its SLC variant is available in capacities ranging from 4 GB to 32 GB. Moving on, Patriot has SSD sticks for Macbook Air, and other Apple devices that support this form-factor, these sticks are driven by SandForce SF-228x controllers, feature MLC NAND flash memory, and are available in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB.

RunCore showed off its engineering potential in four "single-chip" solid-state drives (SSDs). If we're playing semantics here, almost every USB flash drive in the market these days is a "single chip SSD", but in context of these drives, "single chip" refers to a component that combines MLC NAND flash and a SATA interface controller into a single package. The number of NAND flash channels internally is not known, but RunCore thinks these chips should offer good performance in the value segment.

The blue PCBs in the first picture depict single-chip SSDs in three main client form-factors: 2.5-inch SATA, 1.8-inch SATA, and mSATA. As you can see, there's just one main chip, no controller, no cache DRAM, nothing else, except power-conditioning components and firmware ROM chips on the back side of the PCB.

It has been half a year since that the concept of "Ultrabook" was proposed by Intel at Computex 2011. The concept was well-received by major brand vendors in hopes that Ultrabook can revive Notebook market demand, many of whom such as Lenovo, Samsung, Toshiba, Acer, Fujitsu, Asus, have launched Ultrabooks, or announced they are to launch one. With the expected major growth in Ultrabooks in the next few years, SSD indeed is given a great opportunity as it is one of the key components of Ultrabooks.

To seize the opportunity, RunCore, a leading supplier of high-performance solid-state drives has made its move and announced its Ultrabooks solution - 7 mm Pro V Ultra SSD. The product is a Sandforce-based SSD, and it adopts stainless steel enclosure. With SATA 6 Gbps interface it offers up to 525 MB/s read and 525 MB/s write, featuring an extreme write IOPS up to 75000.

Mushkin unveiled three new lines of consumer solid state drives (SSDs) at CES, the Chronos GO, Atlas, and Scorpion. Chronos Go is a series of simple SSDs in the 1.8-inch SATA 6 Gb/s form-factor, Atlas is a series of mSATA SSDs based on a fast controller that takes advantage of SATA 6 Gb/s interface, while Scorpion is a line of ultra-high performance PCI-Express SSDs. At the heart of all three is SandForce SF-2281 SSD controller. Chronos GO is available in Standard and Deluxe variants, both offering sequential read speeds up to 565 MB/s, and write speeds up to 525 MB/s, with 4K random write performance of 90,000 IOPS. These drives are available in capacities of up to 480 GB.

Next up are the Atlas mSATA drives. These include standard and deluxe variants, too, with the same sequential read speeds of up to 565 MB/s. It's just that the deluxe variant offers slightly higher write speeds of up to 535 MB/s, while the standard one stays at up to 525 MB/s. These drives will be available in capacities up to 240 GB. Both Chronos GO and Atlas lines will be available sometime in Q1, 2012.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced it has acquired SANRAD Inc., a privately held provider of flash caching and virtualization software and hardware.

"This transaction is an important step in OCZ's enterprise solid state drive strategy," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "It significantly enhances the ability for customers to increase datacenter performance and efficiency by putting more virtual machines (VM) on a server without slowing down the VM's ability to access stored data, thus substantially lowering the overall cost of deployment. SANRAD's VXL has the ability to optimize caching strategies based on the application and support for VMware's vMotion, which sets the solution apart from others in the industry, allowing enterprises to finally realize the benefit of running a single unified virtualized environment," concluded Mr. Petersen.

At CES 2012 Samsung Electronics has revealed its plans to introduce an updated version of its Series 5 Chromebook. Coming in Q2, the 'new and improved' Chromebook swaps the Atom N570 CPU of the first iteration with a Celeron processor, but keeps the 12.1-inch non-gloss display, the 2 GB of RAM and the 16 GB SSD of its predecessor.

The Celeron-powered Series 5 Chromebooks will start at $399 for the WiFi-only model and is set to reach $449 for the 3G version.

Marvell introduced its latest line of SATA 6 Gbps controllers, under the 88SE92 Series. The series includes the 2-port 88SE9220, 4-port 88SE9230, and 4-port 88SE9235. All three take advantage of the new PCI-Express 2.0 x2 interface. PCI-Express x2 (2 lanes) has till now only been hypothetically possible, since PCI-SIG has no slot specification for it. With increasing need for system bandwidth while keeping pin-counts and package sizes low by onboard controllers (such as SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0), PCIe 2.0 x2 has emerged as a viable solution based on the proven PCIe 2.0 specification, as PCIe 3.0 is yet to attain maturity in the industry. PCIe 2.0 x2 gives the controller system bandwidth of 1000 MB/s per direction, 2000 MB/s total. This ensures that a connected SATA 6 Gb/s device doesn't face a bottleneck at a given time, something which was impossible on older PCIe 2.0 x1 chips.

This system bandwidth bottleneck alleviation also allowed Marvell to add support for up to 4 SATA 6 Gb/s ports on the 88SE9230 and 88SE9235. All three controllers further support port multipliers. Among the three, the 88SE9230 is the top-of-the-line chip, supporting Marvell RAID software, HyperDuo (Marvell's in-house SSD caching technology), RAID 0, 1, 10 modes, AHCI, and 128/256-bit AES native encryption. The 88SE9235 is a cost-effective variant of the 88SE9230, it lacks RAID, and only features AHCI/IDE modes. It also lacks native encryption. The 88SE9220, the 2-port controller, otherwise supports all the features of the 88SE9230, except of course support for RAID 10 (since it's not possible with just 2 member disks).

With the Ultrabook form-factor gaining prominence, there's an urgent need for notebook components to shape up, so is the case with storage devices. A little earlier this month, Crucial announced its latest M4 series SSD in the 2.5" SATA form-factor, which is just 7 mm-slim, as opposed to the ~9.3 mm thickness that's standard. It looks like more SSD makers are hopping into this trend, including Memoright, which launched its FTM Plus Slim series. For SSDs, slimmer 7 mm enclosures don't affect components inside, as SSDs are essentially a printed-circuit board with controllers, DRAM and NAND flash chips.

The FTM Plus Slim series have otherwise the same specifications as the regular (9.3 mm-thick) FTM Plus series. These drives are driven by SandForce SF-2281 controllers, with sequential transfer rates of up to 550 MB/s reads, 500 MB/s writes, and 55,000/50,000 read/write 4K IOPS. They take advantage of SATA 6 Gb/s interface to achieve those speeds. Like its thicker siblings, the FTM Plus Slim will be available in 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB capacities.

Other World Computing (OWC) has this week launched a new version of its OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini external drive, one that adopts two speedy interfaces ensuring high transfer rates - eSATA 6.0 Gbps and USB 3.0 (aka SuperSpeed USB).

OWC's updated drive measures 96.52 x 139.7 x 27.94 mm, features an aircraft grade brushed aluminum enclosure, it makes use of the Asmedia 1051E and 1456 chipsets, and is backed by a three-year warranty. The Mercury Elite Pro mini is available in multiple versions, either with a 5400 RPM or a 7200 RPM hard drive, or a solid state drive. The cheapest of the lot is the 320 GB / 5400 RPM HDD model ($114.99) while the most expensive ($819.99) packs a 480 GB SSD. All models are available here.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today announced its participation at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas where it is debuting a number of new and exciting motherboard technologies that will be central to it's motherboard design in 2012 and beyond. International media and customers will get a sneak peak of GIGABYTE's new technologies at their suite in The Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, from January 10-13.

GIGABYTE is showing forthcoming 7 series motherboards featuring the very latest in CPU power delivery with GIGABYTE's unique Digital Power Engine called 3D Power. Offering digital control over all the main onboard power zones, this new digital PWM design allows users to manipulate and monitor the power provided to 2nd Gen Intel Core and Next Gen processors for the LGA 1155 socket.

Plextor, leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media and storage equipment, announces the release of its latest Solid State Drive, M3 Pro, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas today.

The new M3 Pro Series offers improvements to the current M3S, including a significant boost in sequential and random read/write speeds. Other changes include high-grade 24 nm Toggle Flash, firmware updates, and a new 7 mm height form factor to fit ultra-slim notebooks.

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced the Accelerator Series solid-state cache drives.

The Accelerator Series is designed for desktop PC users who want to give their Microsoft Windows based PC a dramatic performance boost with minimal cost and hassle. Corsair's new line of SSD cache drives includes premium caching software from NVELO, for improved boot times and lightning-quick file access. After connecting an Accelerator Series SSD cache drive to their computer's SATA port and installing the caching software provided with the drive, users will see an immediate speed boost. No drive mapping, no reinstallation of the operating system or applications, and no complex file management is needed - the Accelerator Series SSD cache drive works in tandem with the customer's existing hard drive to provide optimized performance. Customers may see an improvement in file read/write speeds of up to 5x their current hard drive performance after installing a Corsair Accelerator Series SSD cache drive.

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash, storage, and enthusiast computer products today launches its new portable cloud solution the Gauntlet Wifi. Designed for seamless integration with tablets and other popular mobile devices, the Gauntlet Wifi offers superior portability with the ability to connect up to 5 devices for immediate access to stored data on the go.

With App support for IOS, Android, and plug and play compatibility with Windows based operating systems, the Gauntlet Wifi will offer one of the most robust and easy to use personal cloud storage solutions. For ultimate portability and streaming on the go, a built in lithium-ion battery will power the Gauntlet Wifi for up to 5 hours of data streaming. Streaming content will be supported in media player applications and IE 6 or higher, Firefox, and Safari.