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Kingston launches new family of high performance SSDs, doesn't care if you're a business or a consumer
Kingston's turning its SSD solutions up to eleven on its new SSDNow family of products. The SSDNow V+200 is a solid state drive toting SATA 3.0 SandForce SF-2281, capable of up to 535 MB/s read speeds and 480 MB/s writing speeds. Regardless of whether it's for your office or home rig, Kingston reckons it's got your storage needs covered, offering up the V+200 in 60GB, 90GB, 120GB, 240GB and 480GB sizes. The 2.5-inch drives arrive with self-encryption as standard, alongside a three-year warranty with support -- something that's getting increasingly rare. The full press release is waiting below. Update: Prices, alongside the upgrade kit, range from $156 to $985 -- depending on exactly how many photo albums you need on solid state storage.
Kingston's high-performance KC100 SSD is S.M.A.R.Ter than yours
Good news for secure data fans who aren't fond of moving parts: Kingston's shipping a new line of security-focused solid state drives for all your info-hiding needs. Despite being touted as an enterprise product, the new line will happily sit in any SATA-capable machine you wish, smoothly chugging along thanks to its beloved SandForce DuraClass technology. It's not often you find a veritable plethora of features tucked between slabs of NAND, but these guys do have some smarts. Literally. S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology -- don'tcha know) is firmly onboard, as well as self-encrypting tech to keep any schadenfreude at bay. Beyond that, you can look forward to 6Gb/s throughput, backwards-compatibility with current SATA 2 systems, plus a pretty darn generous five years of warranty. For your cut of the action you'll be shelling out $337 (120GB), $650 (240GB) or $1,270 (480GB), depending on how much data you just can't walk away from. A not-at-all pushy infomercial is embedded after the break -- for laughs, or learning.
Kingston introduces 256GB SSDNow V100 SSD for $490
They're still far from being in the bargain bin, but solid state drives are slowly but surely walking their way down from the pricing stratosphere. A week after revealing a 96GB V+ 100 model, Kingston has now uncovered a more capacious sibling that'll definitely tempt existing HDD users who have been holding tight to their platters while scoffing at the tiny SSD sizes cluttering the market. The 256GB SSDNow V100 is a 2.5-incher with sequential read speeds as high as 250MB/sec and write rates as high as 230MB/sec, and as with other Kingston SSDs, this one too packs a three-year warranty and Windows 7 TRIM support. It should be popping up on NewEgg and Buy.com soon here in the US of A for $489.99, and for those in need of an upgrade kit, it'll find its way into a pair of desktop / laptop bundles for $10 more.
Kingston debuts 96GB SSDNow V+100 solid state drive, complete with 25 percent performance boost
Another week, another SSDNow drive. This go 'round, Kingston's trotting out a midrange 96GB version of the SSDNow V+100, which promises to offer a 25 percent increase in performance over existing V+ units. Furthermore, this guy has an enhanced 'always-on' garbage collection feature, which purports to clean redundant data from the drive to prevent performance degradation and maintains the drive over its life cycle. Thankfully for you dual-boot users, the garbage collection scheme operates independently from the OS -- in other words, it works with both modern, TRIM-supporting systems such as Windows 7, as well as older legacy OS' such as Windows Vista and XP that do not support TRIM. The 96 gigger carries an MSRP of $290, while a 64GB unit can be had for as little as $220 and a 512GB version for a staggering $1,900.
Kingston's latest SSDNow V+ reviewed in 128GB flavor
Kingston's SSDNow V+ series is hitting the streets, and bit-tech.net has put it, and its new Toshiba controller, through the wringer. That new silicon offers TRIM support in Windows 7, intended to remove any lingering fears of performance degradation, and this drive has been graced with 128MB of internal cache to conquer random read and write performance. In general the review finds that the controller does its job and TRIM'd deletes don't have a major affect on performance, but there still was some degradation after 1TB worth of writes and deletes. Beyond that the included cache didn't seem to help random I/O performance, and in general the drive doesn't exactly dominate the benchmarks. So, if you've recently upgraded to something else and were feeling a bit of buyers' remorse, you're safe -- for now.
Kingston rolls out second-gen SSDNow V Series drives
Kingston's already proven itself to be pretty proud of its SSDNow V Series drives, but it's still found some room for improvement, with it now rolling out its second generation batch of drives in the line. Available in your choice of 30GB, 64GB and 128GB capacities, the new drives promise some improved performance (with PCMark HDD 2005 scores of between 18,900 and 20,117), and join the company's V+ drives in adding support for Windows 7 TRIM functionality, which should help maintain the speed of the drives over their lifespan. As before, you'll also be able to choose between either standalone unit or a bundled kit for desktops or laptops, with prices ranging from $109.99 to $377.
Kingston's SSDNow V+ series hits 512GB capacity, adds Trim support
Kingston's upping the ante on its solid state drive series in pretty much all the ways that count. The SSDNow V+ line boasts a 512GB upper limit, twice the previous generation, with iterative options for 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB. Read / write speeds have more than doubled to 230MB/sec and 180MB/sec, respectively. Best of all, these suckers now support TRIM. Prices range from as low as $268 for standalone 64GB an can go as high as $1968 for 512GB, with an extra $15 or so tacked on if you want the bundle instead -- still alluring, still not for the feint of funding, but the good news is, if you don't need Trim or the extra speed, the original SSDNow V series is available for much smaller dents on your wallet.
Kingston SSDNow V dips to 30GB size, lower price
We've already made our fond feelings toward Kingston's SSDNow V line quite clear, so you'll understand our joy at the news that it's about to add a new member to the fold. Cutting storage down to 30GB should mean Kingston is about to offer its cheapest drive yet, though all the info we have is that it'll be "under 90GBP" (or $145). That doesn't immediately strike us as better value than the 40GB SSDNow V -- which reached an $85 price point not too long ago -- but European prices aren't directly comparable at the best of times. In exchange for your cashola, you'll get a speedy little boot drive, backed by a three-year warranty, 24/7 tech support, and the knowledge that it can withstand a baseball bat should the need ever arise. Full PR after the break.
Kingston takes a bat to its SSDNow V Series drive
We put one of Kingston's SSDNow V Series drives through its paces last month, but we can't say we went quite as far as Kingston itself has gone in its latest demo video, which takes stress-testing to an all-American extreme. You can probably guess what happens next considering that Kingston is out boasting about the video, but, hey, it's not everyday that you get to see 256GB fly off the end of a bat. [Thanks, Shane]
Kingston 40GB SSDNow review
From the moment that we heard of the new 40GB Kingston SSD, we couldn't help but get our hopes up. Who knows if (or more likely, when) SSD drives will ever completely replace spinning platters with all the digital media people collect today, so rather than stretching your budget and compressing your media in order to stuff everything onto a 256GB solid state drive, we dug the idea of snagging a small (and affordable) SSD for boot / application operations and utilizing a spacious HDD for archival. Not to mention -- regardless of how fast a disk is -- two are almost always better than one. If you're interested in rigging up a similar setup, hop on past the break to have a look at our impressions.
Kingston's $85 40GB SSDNow V Series SSD gets heavily benchmarked
Aw, snap. For years now, we've been waiting (and waiting) for solid state disc prices to stoop down from the realm of you've-got-to-be-kidding-me, and now it finally looks like the everyman can ditch the HDD and get onboard with flash. Kingston's newly announced SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive ain't very capacious, but for just $84.99 (after rebates) at NewEgg, it's definitely affordable. The drive itself isn't slated to ship until November 9th, but the cool kids over at Legit Reviews seem to have already wrangled a unit for review. Kingston promises sequential read rates of up to 170MBps and write rates of up to 40MBps, and while that's certainly not mind-blowing, it's not too awful given the 2.5-inch form factor and bargain-basement price. Oh, and critics found that the drive far surpassed published speed ratings in testing, which is always completely and utterly awesome. Hit the via link for more, vaquero. [Via Legit Reviews]
Kingston dials things up to 256GB with new SSDNow V+ line
Kingston is still a relative newcomer to the SSD game, but it looks like it's already well on its way to endless, somewhat confusing product refreshes, with it now rolling out three drives in its new SSDNow V+ line. Available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities, the new drives best the previous non-plus SSDNow V line with read and write speeds up to 220MB/sec and 180MB/sec, respectively, and pack some higher input and output operations per second (or IOPS) to boot, which should also help to deliver an overall boost in speed. As you might expect, however, while things start a somewhat reasonable $254 for the 64GB model, things get decidedly more out of reach from there, with the 128GB drive running $500 firm, and the 256GB drive setting you back a hefty $992.
Kingston makes the SSD upgrade easier with SSDNow V bundles
Good show, Kingston. Rather than just getting into the SSD game to follow everyone else around, you've decided to spin things a little differently -- and yeah, we dig it. Here at Computex, the company has just introduced its SSDNow V series bundles, which aim directly at mainstream consumers who need a helping hand in making the leap from HDD to SSD. Said kits arrive in 128GB and 64GB capacities, but we get the impression that these two are just the beginning. Essentially, Kingston provides cloning software, step-by-step instructions for HDD removal / SSD install instructions, mounting brackets and even a 2.5-inch USB SATA external enclosure for those picking up the laptop bundle. Prices range from $149 to $263, and so far as we can tell, these should be sliding out to retailers shortly.
