It takes MSI a while to determine to enter Workstation market. MSI felt compelled to expand product line, base on users' daily usage requirements. Thus after focus on developing quite a range of gaming notebooks for casual and hardcore gamiers for years, MSI GT60 Workstation will be arriving in December 2012. MSI created a professional tool for engineers, designers, scientists, and a lot more professional users ; helping them achieve their ideas, creations into tengible products or virtual artworks.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced the availability of its new SATA III-based Vector SSD Series featuring the company's next-generation Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller. OCZ's worldwide technology hardware and firmware teams developed the new controller silicon and firmware completely in-house to enable full design control over the Vector SSD Series roadmap, while delivering exceptional I/O performance, enhanced reliability and endurance, and a host of differentiated features to empower high performance laptops, desktops, and workstations with superior storage capabilities.

OCZ Vector SSDs provide exceptional input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance and the cutting-edge Barefoot 3 controller consistently delivers superior sustained performance over time regardless of whether the data streams are in compressed or uncompressed formats. As a result, this groundbreaking SSD series provides faster file transfers and boot-ups, and a quicker, more responsive storage experience.

Transcend announced the ESD200 line of portable SSDs. Measuring 62 x 92 x 10.5 mm (WxDxH) and weighing just 56 g, the drives are available in 128 GB and 256 GB capacities, and take advantage of USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface, with a single cable handling both power and host connectivity. The drives provide sequential read speeds of up to 260 MB/s, and up to 225 MB/s sequential writes. In addition to data encryption software, the zippy road-warriors come with ECC support, and one-touch data backup. The included Transcend Elite software also syncs files and settings between computers although it's not [yet?] Windows to Go certified. The 256 GB and 128 GB variants are priced around $250 and $125, respectively.

Ahead of its December launch, Lenovo gave us a sneak peak of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch Ultrabook on its website. The 14-incher retains the essential design of its August 2012 launched predecessor, with the addition of Windows 8 Pro, a multi-touch screen, and a screen-resolution marked "HD+," which most probably is 1600 x 900 pixels. No other details were revealed. We don't expect the new X1 Carbon to deviate from its formidable system specs, which includes Core i5 "Ivy Bridge" with vPro processor, GeForce graphics, and SSD/HDD storage options.

Intel's SSD 525 line of performance mSATA SSDs may be slated for 2013, but made an early debut with the company's NUC (next unit of computing) desktop. A 180 GB variant of the drive was put to test by VR-Zone, which is driven by LSI-SandForce SF-2281 processor, and features three Intel-made 20 nm MLC NAND flash chips (6-channels). The drive cracked Anvil Storage Utilities benchmark with 504 MB/s (compressible) and 463 MB/s (incompressible) sequential read speeds, 468 MB/s (compressible) and 240 MB/s (incompressible) sequential writes, and about 55,841 IOPS 4K random write (QD16) performance. The performance numbers make the drive appear nearly as fast as larger 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, and could be a boon for Ultrabook makers.

Have you ever felt the need to have control (which can't be second-guessed by the OS) over which drives stay active in your multi-bay drive enclosure? If so, this enclosure (model: CRCH35U3IS) from Japanese peripherals vendor Century could be a Godsend. The enclosure allows you to manually toggle power to individual drives. It features four 3.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s lockable caddies, and connects to its host over USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface. A single SSD has been tested to achieve transfer rates as high as an honest-sounding 400 MB/s. The enclosure is cooled by a temperature-activated fan, which can be overridden. Measuring 130 x 260 x 185 mm (WxDxH), the enclosure weighs about 3.2 kg (probably because it includes a power supply). Slated for early-December, it is priced at 17,800¥ (US $220)

Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a market leader and award-winning innovator in consumer electronics, announced today that for a limited time over this Black Friday weekend, its new 250 gigabyte (GB) SSD 840 solid-state drives will be available at a special discounted price and will include a download of the new "Far Cry 3" video game from Ubisoft Entertainment at no additional cost.

From Black Friday through Cyber Monday (11/22 - 11/26), or while supplies last, consumers will be able to purchase the 250 GB version of Samsung's SSD 840 drive for just $169.99, $20 less than the usual minimum advertised price. They also will receive a code enabling them to download the full PC version of "Far Cry 3," normally priced at $59.99.

Transcend announced a 128 GB variant of its StoreJet Cloud wireless SSD (model: TS128GSJC10K), which the company launched in December 2011, with 32 GB and 64 GB variants. Measuring 99 x 54 x 16.5 mm, and weighing 90 g (roughly the size and weight of an entry-level smartphone), the drive is a self-powered wireless SSD, which uses a Li-polymer battery that can keep the drive connected for up to 6 hours; and 802.11 b/g/n (up to 150 Mbps) WLAN interface, with which the drive can either be part of a wireless network, or serve up to five clients in a small radius.

Since it's technically a NAS, the StoreJet Cloud features support for basic NAS features, and can be controlled using apps for mobile devices via Google Play and Apple App Store. The drive uses USB 2.0/1.1 for charging, and can connect to a host as USB mass-storage device. Thanks to drops in NAND flash prices, the 128 GB variant is priced around US $150. For reference, the 64 GB variant was launched at $300, just last year.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it is shipping the next generation of its most cost-effective SSDNow V Series solid-state drive. The Kingston SSDNow V300 is a powerful upgrade solution for cost-conscious consumers looking to upgrade their existing desktop or notebook PC.

The new SSDNow V300 is 10x faster than a 7200 RPM hard-disk drive†. It is powered by an LSI SandForce Flash Storage Processor (FSP) solution customized for Kingston, and optimized for industry-leading 19 nm NAND Flash memory to deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 450 MB/s. Using best-in-class components, SSDNow V300 combines quality, performance and affordability for first-time SSD users or anyone looking to upgrade an existing system.

I-O Data unveiled the HDPX-UTSS line of Portable solid state drives. Built with a 9 mm-thick chassis that encloses a 7 mm-thick SSD originally manufactured by Intel (most likely Intel SSD 330 series) , the series includes 60 GB (HDPX-UTSS60K), 120 GB (HDPX-UTSS120K) and 240 GB (HDPX-UTSS240K) models, priced at 10,920¥ ($137), 16,485¥ ($207) and 31,080¥ ($391), respectively. The drives feature USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface, to alleviate bandwidth bottlenecks. Real-world benchmarks show the drives to provide up to 250 MB/s of transfer rates. The drives are Windows to Go (WTG) compliant. Measuring 75 × 110 × 9 mm, the drives weigh about 110 g.

In October 2012, Renice released the world's first native USB 3.0 SSD controller, as well as portable USB 3.0 SSDs ranging from 32 GB to 512 GB, at prices no higher than any SSD products in the market.

These SSDs, using Renice's self-developed U3127-IT controller, have some unique features like AES-256 bit, power failure protection and write protection, etc, with a read/write speed up to 430 MB/320 MB/s.

Synology America Corp. today announced the launch of the RS10613xs+, following the recent release of the RS3413xs+. The new 10-bay 2U RackStation is Synology's most advanced hardware to date. The RS10613xs+ is built with SME in mind, providing fast and scalable storage at a price point that makes it peerless; the ideal storage solution between NAS and SAN. Taking advantage of up to 8 of the new RX1213sas expansion modules, it can quickly scale to up to 106 SAS drives (up to 424TB raw storage), allowing businesses to expand their capacity on the fly.

The new addition to the XS+ series is optimized for virtual network storage, supporting both iSCSI and NFS. It is certified for VMware vSphere 5, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer. It offers VAAI integration, including Hardware Assisted Locking (ATS), Block Zero, Full Copying, and Thin Provisioning.

Creative technologies developer Modbook Inc. today announced it is doubling the pen pressure sensitivity levels on the Modbook Pro, the company's one-of-a-kind Mac-based pen tablet computer for the creative community. The solid-state drive (SSD) capacity and random-access memory (RAM) in the base configuration of the Modbook Pro are also being doubled. This substantial improvement in the Modbook Pro's specifications comes at no additional cost to customers - the manufacturer's suggested retail price of the Modbook Pro remains unchanged at $3,499.

Beginning immediately, the pen pressure sensitivity levels on the Modbook Pro, whose pen tablet functionality is powered by a state-of-the-art digitizer from industry leader Wacom, are being doubled from 512 to 1,024, four times the industry standard for tablet computers.

Mushkin, Inc., an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance and mission-critical computer products, today announced the worldwide launch of its new 30 GB Atlas deluxe mSATA solid-state drive (SSD), scheduled to start shipping this month.

The new 30 GB Atlas deluxe, the latest from the award-winning mSATA SSD product line, is the fastest on the market, featuring read/write speeds up to 555/365 megabytes per second, and 4KB random read/write IOPS up to 92,000/70,000. Atlas deluxe delivers SSD reliability and performance, in a lower-powered, smaller mSATA SSD form factor that measures about an eighth of the size for easy installation on any device with an mSATA slot. Validated for NVELO Dataplex caching software and Intel Smart Response Technology, the Atlas deluxe mSATA is well-suited as a cache for existing hard drives or as a standalone SSD for thin and light laptops and Ultrabooks.

Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a market leader and award-winning innovator in consumer electronics, announced today that its 840 family of SSDs is available for purchase. The new family of drives includes the 840 Pro SSD, a high-performance drive for professionals and tech enthusiasts that want the best possible computing performance, and the 840 SSD, for mainstream users that want an affordable upgrade solution for their PC.

For a limited time, the 840 Pro SSDs will also include a code for a downloadable full version of the highly anticipated video game "Assassin's Creed III," with purchase of the 128 GB, 256 GB or 512 GB models.

TDK Corporation has developed the GBDriver RS4 series of NAND type flash memory controllers with support for 3 Gbps serial ATA. Sales will begin in January 2013.

With an effective access speed of 180 MB/sec, the GBDriver RS4 is an advanced high-speed SATA controller chip. It is fully compatible not only with the latest 1xnm generation and 2x nm generation 16 kB/page SLC (single level cell) and MLC (multi level cell) NAND type flash memory, but also with 8 kB/page and 4 kB/page structures. This allows the customer to select the optimal flash memory for the respective application, providing the flexibility to configure high-speed SATA storage with a capacity ranging from 512 MB to 1 TB.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, today announced its fourth generation green memory solution at the annual Memory Solution CIO Forum at the Shilla hotel, Seoul, Korea. Designed to achieve superior system level performances, the new solution introduces a combination of its advanced 20 nanometer (nm) class DDR3 and 20 nm-class SSDs based on high-performance SATA 6.0 Gb/s and SAS interfaces respectively.

The new green memory solution addresses the benefits of green memory for next-generation enterprise servers, server storage solutions and personal computing solutions, broadening the benefits of green memory solutions even further throughout the IT industry. The reduced costs and optimized IT expenditure efficiencies are well in-line with the creating shared value (CSV) framework.

Synology Inc. today launched RS3413xs+, the first XS+ series NAS server that boasts superior performance of 400,000+ read IOPS and high availability to provide a rigorous foundation for the mission-critical tasks of large-scale businesses.

Equipped with Xeon Quad Core 3.3 GHz CPU and dual 10GbE bandwidth capability, the RS3413xs+ is capable of delivering 2,000+ MB/s read throughput under RAID 5 configuration with link aggregation. The combination of SSD cache technology and SATA drives boosts throughput efficiently while minimizing cost per gigabyte. Besides, encryption acceleration with AES New Instructions ensures its performance stays uncompromised.

As big data, high-performance computing (HPC) and cloud-computing applications push the demand for real-time access of data into the zettabytes, Intel Corporation announced today its next-generation data center solid-state drive (SSD), the Intel Solid-State Drive DC S3700 Series, designed to remove storage bottlenecks and maximize multi-core CPU performance. The Intel SSD DC S3700 Series delivers fast, consistent performance and low latencies along with strong data protection and high endurance to help IT personnel support today's most demanding data center applications.

"Today's data explosion creates unique storage challenges for data center professionals," said Rob Crooke, Intel vice president and general manager for the Intel Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Solutions Group. "High latencies and slow storage I/O can cripple data centers' ability to deliver exciting big data or cloud-computing applications with fast, low latency data access. Intel's next-generation Intel SSD DC S3700 Series breaks through SSD limitations for the data center on all fronts - fast, consistent performance, strong data protection and high endurance -- so IT professionals can deliver on their most demanding technology initiatives."

Market research firm TrendForce released NAND flash shipment figures for 3Q 2012. The global NAND flash market is valued at US $4.626 billion, a healthy 6.6% growth over the previous quarter. A TrendForce DRAMeXchange report provided a break-down of shipments of NAND flash by manufacturers. Leading the pack is Samsung, with 41.2% market-share, registering a 1.8% QoQ growth. Trailing behind is Toshiba, with 24.7% market share, and a significant 12.9% QoQ growth. In September, Toshiba cut prices and scaled up production, which may have contributed to the growth. Micron holds 14.4% of the market with 2.8% growth, SK Hynix 11.6% with 6.4% growth (the company began mass-production of SSD-grade NAND flash this quarter), and Intel with 7.6% of the market-share, growing at 19.7%. Bear in mind, these numbers represent NAND flash components used not only in SSDs, but also USB flash drives, memory cards, etc.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today issues this update to better inform its customers, investors, partners, and stakeholders about the status of its current business operation.

"We are undergoing a transition phase in the Company's evolution in which we are refocusing our efforts on products and strategies that will benefit both OCZ and our stakeholders over the long term," said Ralph Schmitt, CEO of OCZ Technology. "We have already taken aggressive steps to address some short-term tactical challenges and have begun streamlining the organization to help ensure that OCZ will be in the best position moving forward to address the fast growing consumer and enterprise SSD markets."

Other World Computing (OWC) www.macsales.com, a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today the OWC Mercury Aura Pro is the industry's first high-performance Solid State Drive upgrade for the new 2012 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display (rMBP) computers introduced by Apple last week.

Available in 480 GB capacity for immediate ordering and with additional capacities to be announced in November, the 6G (6 Gb/s) SandForce Driven Mercury Aura Pro offers rMBP owners up to nearly 3x more storage and/or backup capacity than the factory 128 GB flash module.

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, today confirmed its OWC Data Doubler Kit is compatible with the new 2012 Mac mini announced by Apple earlier this week. The 'do-it-yourself' kit enables mini owners to add a second internal 2.5" SATA hard drive up to 1.0TB or a high-performance Solid State Drive to complement the existing internal factory drive. Fully supported with all required parts, tools, and a step-by-step 'how-to' video, users can add an OWC Mercury 6G SSD up to 480GB in capacity starting from $83.99. With this kit, users can enjoy near instantaneous booting and application launches along with an incredible boost to overall system and application performance thanks to real-world sustained data rates of up to 559MB/s. While OWC highly recommends its Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSDs for the 6.0Gb/s data bus equipped 2011-2012 Apple mini, this DIY kit is fully compatible with all 9.5mm or smaller 2.5" Serial ATA SSDs, including the largest capacity in the 3G speed class OWC Mercury Electra 960GB SSD.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, today announced that it is producing advanced solid state drives (SSDs) that are designed specifically for use in servers and enterprise storage systems. These drives - the SM843 and the SM1625 - will be particularly useful as high-speed storage for a wide range of server and storage applications that depend on extremely fast data writing including social media in the cloud, SQL database logs, media streaming, virtualization, video on demand and online transaction processing (OLTP).

Samsung's new data center and enterprise SSDs deliver extremely high performance with low power consumption in providing the most efficient storage solutions for data center applications," said Myungho Kim, vice president of memory marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will aggressively produce its new line-up of SSDs beginning this month to accelerate SSDs' move into not only the server but also the storage marketplace, as we continue to affirm our leadership in the SSD market."

SMART Storage Systems, an innovative and rapidly emerging enterprise SSD technology provider, today announced its award-winning Guardian Technology Platform has enabled the use of 19nm multi-level cell (MLC) NAND Flash for enterprise applications. Through support for the smaller, more cost effective 19nm process node, SMART Storage Systems' next generation solid state drives (SSDs) provide enterprise data center and cloud environments with the industry's best combination of performance and endurance, and lower the storage total cost of ownership (TCO) for users.

For years, OEMs and enterprise organizations have looked to SSD performance to meet new throughput requirements being placed on the data center. However, due to the high costs associated with higher endurance enterprise MLC (eMLC) or single-level cell (SLC) SSDs, enterprise data centers frequently turn to consumer-grade MLC SSD solutions. Because they are not designed for mixed workload applications, consumer-grade MLC-based SSDs quickly burnout in enterprise environments. This issue is compounded as Flash geometry continues to get smaller, and native MLC Flash endurance is reduced, increasing organizations TCO due to drive replacement costs. SMART Storage Systems' proprietary Guardian Technology Platform drives additional endurance from consumer-grade MLC Flash through a proprietary suite of enterprise features and endurance enhancement technologies, enabling organizations to avoid the need to replace SSDs prior to the end of the warranty period.