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Ridata bringing 6x BD-R media to United States
Anyone who has even looked into recording content onto a BD-R knows just how immensely expensive a single disc is. Thankfully, you'll have one more option (and thus, one more competitor to push prices downward) starting next year. Advanced Media, the parent company of Ridata, will be debuting 6x recordable Blu-ray Disc media at CES 2009, with availability in the US slated for Q2 '09. As of now, the only discs planned for release here are 25GB single-layer units, but we don't suspect the dual-layer variants will be too far behind.
Ridata Ultra-S Plus MLC SSDs arrive in 32/64/128GB flavors, start at $170
Ridata has dabbled in the wonderful world of triple-data capacity SSDs before, but as with most manufacturers, it wouldn't open its mouth and divulge a price. Now, however, we've got three newcomers to swoon over along with price tags to balk (or cheer, depending on wallet depth) over. The Ultra-S Plus MLC SATA SSD line has launched in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB sizes, all of which offer up to 128MB/sec read speeds and 80MB/sec write speeds. Without further adieu, the late July-bound trio will be selling for $169.90, $294.90 and $537.90 from least capacious to most. So, you gettin' one?
Ritek joins the 128GB SSD crowd
Now that 64GB SSDs are getting (somewhat) commonplace, it looks like 128GB is the new standard top-end size, as Ritek joins Samsung in announcing the triple-digit capacity. The 2.5-inch SATA drive features a crazy 300MB/s burst read speed, SMART monitoring, and a read / write rating of two million cycles. Those of you who are just extremely wealthy as opposed to fabulously so might be interested in the 32GB and 64GB versions -- we hear business class is just as nice.
RIDATA reveals self-monitoring SMART Compact Flash cards
Looking for a new Compact Flash card, are you? Good news, as RIDATA is fixing to unveil a new line of SMART CF cards at CES. Reportedly, the rugged new cards will be available in two series: the Supreme 150X (up to 8GB capacity-SLC format) and Lightning (up to 16GB MLC format). What differentiates these buggers from the crowd is their ability to self-monitor and report, giving owners the option of checking on the unit's status whenever they please. It also sports embedded Error Correction Code and has been tested for 100,000 program / erase cycles, but unfortunately, we've no idea how much the cards will run you when they land.[Thanks, Mark]
ReadyBoost ready, but doesn't boost
Vista's ReadyBoost feature, which theoretically improves performance by placing part of Vista's memory swapfile onto a highspeed flash drive, is one of the slickest OS tricks we've heard about in a long time. Unfortunately, it isn't as sweet in practice, according to PC World. They tested three USB flash drives by Kingston, Lexar, and Ridata that claim to be ReadyBoost, uh, ready, and found that while they were able to measure a slight speedup in certain activities (like opening frequently-used applications) overall the effect was unnoticeable -- they concluded that "installing more RAM inside your PC would help a lot more." Bummer. So much for all those freebie USB sticks we have laying around.
Ritek's 16GB and 32GB SSDs starting at a low, low $270
Well hot damn kids, Ritek just announced that their take on the Solid State Disk (SSD) will begin shipment this year. Impressive enough seeing as how only Samsung (and perhaps TDK) can pull this off currently. But what if we told you that they'll cost your friendly OEM a mere $169 to slip 16GB of that cool RiDATA flash into your swank new laptop? That's right, just $169 for a 1.8-inch 16GB SSD or $199 for the 2.5-inch version. They'll also offer 32GB SSDs at launch (64GB near the end of the year) which we can only assume will be less than twice the cost of the 16GB version when purchased in bulk. That's damn cheap, and likely far less than the $600 premium already quoted for the 1.8-inch 32GB SSD from SanDisk. When? Q2, that's when. Can you wait?Update: Bad news: DigiTimes now states that the Ritek 1.8-inch, 16GB and 32GB SSD cards will cost $270 (not $169 as originally reported) and $475, respectively. Still, not bad.
RITEK rolling out HD DVD-Rs next month
HD DVD-Rs are on the way, with Maxell/Hitachi and Mitsubishi/Verbatim announcing shipments to Japan in July, and September in the US, now Advanced Media, better known as RITEK or RIDATA, has announced they will ship single-layer HD DVD-Rs to the US in late July. Other than the 15GB discs next month, they will release dual-layer 30GB HD DVD-Rs and single-layer HD DVD-RWs sometime in the fourth quarter.We're still left guessing as to the burning speed supported by the discs as that is not mentioned in the press release. There is also no specific price mentioned, but we can expect HD DVD recorders to become available around the same time as the media.
