SanDisk Gets Into The Solid State Drive Game
Well, technically, they were there all along. In fact, they were one of the first companies to develop one some 20 years ago. However, with the race to produce bigger and cheaper SSD’s raging on, it seemed that SanDisk took a back seat. However, at CES, SanDisk told me that all they were waiting for was the right time and that time is now.
At the show, SanDisk announced three drives in some extremely competitive price points. The new 7000 series drives are produced on a 43 nanometer MLC technology and employ SanDisk’s new high speed controllers to achieve SLC SSD performance at MLC cost. They will be offered to OEM’s in 60, 120 and 240GB sizes at $149, $249 and $499, respectively. They should begin showing up in Q2 this year and hopefully at retail shortly after that. Netbooks will also receive upgrades as SanDisk will also be coming out with a series of plug and play pSSD modules.
More products were also announced at the show so we put together a little video to run you through the rest…
It was definitely a busy CES for SanDisk and I’m definitely excited to see those new SSD drives hit the market. I had one rep from another memory company tell me that this might push prices down a little faster than they would have liked. Well, it’s good news for the rest of us I guess and it means that a sub $2 per GB price might not be too far away.
BFG Branches Into Systems
BFG Technologies, long known for their video cards and motherboards is entering the gaming system arena. Targeted at the “Graduated Gamer” which they describe as someone who has a lot of money but doesn’t necessary want to build their own system, the Phobos is a high performance gaming/home theatre system that will meet their every need. At price points of $3000, $5000 and $8000 US, it better!
The signature feature of the Phobos systems is this touch screen control center. Unlike typical touch screens or LCD’s that you might see out there, this one contains an ARM processor and has the ability to do so much more than just tell you what’s going on with your system. The screen will actually allow you to shut off the system and turn it on in addition to all the multimedia features. Speaking of multimedia, the Phobos contains a built in iPod dock on the top of the case.
Each Phobos system is hand delivered to its owner and a service technician will take care of all the duties of transferring all your files from your old system to your new Phobos system. They called this their “Concierge Service” which makes me wonder if they will wear the suit and the white gloves. After a couple months, they will even schedule a follow up to tune up your system. Tech support is included for the first year, 24/7 and you can extend this at reasonable prices. Ownership also gets you access to a trade up program so your system is always top of the line.