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Samsung Chromebox gets a premature outing, $330 price tag (video)
Samsung has been almost completely silent regarding its Chromebox since its CES outing, so we were taken aback when we were tipped off that it was hiding in plain sight on TigerDirect's web store. Sure enough, a product listing provides a lot more detail about the tiny Chrome OS desktop than Samsung gave us in January, including its use of a 1.9GHz, dual-core Celeron B840, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 16GB solid-state drive and six (not five) USB ports. We haven't seen mention of the promised wireless keyboard and mouse bundle, although the retailer's configuration might reflect a stripped-down trim level: at $330, it's a lot less than the $400 we were quoted at the start of the year. We wouldn't count on the store listing staying up -- at least, not until Google I/O -- but you can get a whirlwind tour of the Chromebox's core features through the hilariously awkward video below, which strips out the price if you're not watching from TigerDirect itself. [Thanks, Pete]
ADATA ships its Premier and Premier Pro SSDs to US, gives your laptop a dose of energy
If you remember those Premier SP800 and Premier Pro SP900 solid-state drives that ADATA teased us with in February, you'll be glad to know that they've crossed the Pacific to reach the US and Canada. The two SSDs are meant to give a swift kick to the performance of laptops with regular-sized, 2.5-inch drive bays. Both use SandForce controllers, but are focused on very different areas: the Premier's SATA II interface, 280MB/s reads and 260MB/s writes suit it most to newcomers looking to escape the land of spinning hard drives, while the tangibly faster SATA III, 550MB/s reads and 520MB/s writes of the Premier Pro cater more to the speed junkie set. Tracking down the Premier's 32GB and 64GB flavors might be a challenge, based on our early checks, but we've already found the Premier Pro's 64GB, 128GB and 256GB varieties lurking on Newegg at pre-discount prices between $100 and $300.
RunCore's Mini DOM packs single-chip, SATA-based SSD into tiny places
Fitting a truly quick solid-state drive into a small space isn't easy, and for that reason RunCore's new Mini DOM (Disk On Module) stands out from the crowd. It's billed as the first single-chip SSD to use a SATA interface (SATA II, to be exact), giving it that much more bandwidth than the pokey IDE and PATA DOMs of old while remaining under half the size of a regular mSATA drive. RunCore's own tests show it hitting about 113MB/s sequential reads and 47MB/s writes. Neither figure will knock the socks off even a mainstream budget SSD like Intel's SSD 330, but they're more than brisk enough for embedded gear. The drives can survive brutal conditions, too: an Industrial Grade trim level can survive temperatures as chilly as -40F and as scorching as 185F. So, the next time you pry open some military equipment and see one of these sitting inside, in three different formats and capacities from 8GB to 64GB, you'll know exactly what you're looking at.
Evigroup drops SmartPaddle Pro price to €699, optional head-tracking feature watches you intently
Are you and all of your friends flocking to buy that thing shown above at full retail price? Exactly. Evigroup's SmartPaddle Pro tablet is now available from €699 (under $900) for the base 10-inch configuration with no GPS, no 3G and a 32GB solid-state hard drive. Additional configurations are available with 1 or 2GB of RAM, and the high-end configuration, which includes 3G and GPS goes for under $1,500. The SmartPaddle Pro, with all the trimmings (including head-tracking), retails for around $1,530. Other specs include a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, five hour run time, mini-HDMI port and capacitive touchscreen, none of which seem to justify the (still bloated) new price tag. Click past the break for the full video, which is apparently set to an Enya album.
LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD review
Thunderbolt's the newest kid on the connection block, and its greased-lightning transfer rates make for an awfully attractive alternative to USB and FireWire for those who move big chunks of data on the regular. Despite its many advantages, it's still in its infancy, so there are few peripherals supporting the 10Gbps interface. LaCie's Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD is among the first to make use of Apple and Intel's new data superhighway, and it pairs a couple of 2.5-inch, 120GB Intel 320 series SSDs in RAID 0 configuration to take full advantage of all that bandwidth. But, such speed comes at a hefty cost: $899.95 when it goes on sale later this month. Is it as quick as they say? Is it worth the money? There's only one way to find out, so let's see how the latest Little Big Disk handles itself, shall we? %Gallery-138735%
Smart Modular's 1.6TB Optimus SSD reads up to 1GB/s, claims to be the largest and fastest
We love us a good speed record and today's comes paired with another superlative: biggest and baddest. Smart Modular Technologies just announced the Optimus SSD, a drive with up to a record 1.6TB in storage that can also read up to a gigabyte of data per second. The 2.5-inch drive also promises write speeds of 500MB/s and will be available in smaller 200GB, 400GB, and 800GB capacities, in addition to that 1.6TB monster. No word on pricing except that Smart Modular insists they'll be "cost-effective." Then again, the company expects IT departments will snap these up for corporate use, so your guess is as good as ours as to how accessible these will be for run-of-the-mill hobbyists.
Hitachi-LG unveils 2nd generation hybrid optical drive with flash-based storage to boot
The Hitachi-LG Data Storage joint venture has itself fostered yet another mixed product, combining both an optical disk drive and flash storage into a single form factor. The 2nd generation of its Hybrid Drive uses Micron's 25nm NAND flash memory in 16GB, 32GB, 64GB capacities (with those figures to rise in later iterations, naturally) and can be united with either DVD or Blu-ray players -- perfect for laptops and other portable devices with just one drive to spare. (The one stretched out on display, pictured above, was a 12.7mm slim DVD-RW tray type). Hitachi housed samples of the drive at its CEATEC booth and even showed off a few example products (first generation drive, too). Care to see what could be under the hood of a future purchase? Pictures below. %Gallery-104372%
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.
