OCZ has unveiled the Apex SATA II 2.5” Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, its midrange offering for enthusiasts, system builders, and mainstream computer users demanding the latest technology.

OCZ says the Apex Series SSDs have an excellent 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF), thus ensuring the reliability. The SSDs offers read speed up to 230 MB/sec and write speed up to 160 MB/sec.

“As the adoption of SSD drives continues to ramp, it is our goal to enable everyday consumers to take advantage of the benefits of solid state drives,” said Eugene Chang, Director of Product Management at OCZ Technology Group. “The new Apex Series is positioned at the center of our lineup and features an updated controller and internal RAID design to deliver superior performance to mainstream consumers at a very aggressive price.”

The Apex series SSD drives are available in storage capacities of 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB. Though the OCZ terms the series as ‘affordable midrange offering’, the price have not yet been announced.
 

Sandisk has joined hands with LG Electronics to develop a MicroSD card that can be loaded with content and then locked for use only in approved handsets.

Sandisk demonstrated the new technology for mobile phones that enables mobile network operators (MNOs) to offer their customers multimedia-rich services using removable flash memory cards. The content preloaded in these cards can only be used in approved handsets.

According to Sandisk, network operators can freely distribute preloaded content on removable memory cards, while restricting the accessibility of such premium content to only their network subscribers. This valuable content protection service is made possible by enabling memory cards to authenticate user credentials via data on the SIM card.

Sandisk demonstrated the new technology using the new LG KC910 Renoir handset. Sandisk says it brings flexible storage-based services to network operators by allowing IP connectivity to the memory card in the handset. The memory card serves as a network node that is remotely manageable by the operator using industry-standard TCP/IP and OMA Smart Card Web Server.

“With this advanced technology, handset manufacturers and MNOs will be able to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of consumers who want easy access to premium content on their mobile devices,” said Amir Lehr, senior director, business development, SanDisk.

Acer has announced the slick new Acer H233H 23-inch widescreen display and Aspire X1700, the newest member in the desktop PC line.

The Acer H233H 23-inch display offers cinematic quality with sleek styling. It boasts a 16:9 aspect ratio for maximum HD support, a high contrast ratio and fast response time. The display also features SensorTouch technology, a touch-sensing solution with effortless settings for one-touch convenience.

It features a 1920x1080 resolution, 40,000:1 contrast ratio, 300 cd/m2 brightness and a 5ms response time. It also comes with two premium speakers for high-performance sound.

The small form factor (SFF) PC Aspire X1700 boasts an Intel Pentium Dual-Core processor E2200 and 4GB DDR2 memory, for extremely fast system response. The integrated NVIDIA GeForce graphics enhance multimedia performance with support for the latest DirectX games. It offers 640GB SATA II hard drive to store a vast library of music, movies and games. It also features nine USB 2.0 ports and a multi-in-one card reader.

The Acer H233H 23-inch LCD display is available now for a MSRP of $229.99, while the Acer Aspire X1700-U3700A is available for a MSRP of $479.99 in the United States.

The big deal here is the 80plus certificate that means the power supply works at greater than 85% average efficiency. Hiper introduces its brand new S Series with the first model: S625. This 625 Watts power supply has been certified 80 PLUS® Bronze by www.80plus.org. The Hiper S625 performs extremely well and exceeds the 80PLUS requirements by far.

The new S Series will offer a range of highly reliable and stable performing PSUs with the well-known excellent built quality by Hiper. It comes in Gun Metal with a new logo and packaging design. The Hiper S625 will be available soon and represents best price/performance ratio at probably the lowest RRP of all A-brand 625W PSUs with 80 PLUS® Bronze certification: US$ 95 / € 72 / £ 65 (excl. VAT). The new model has also been approved for NVIDIA SLi and comes with a 3 years RTB warranty.

80 PLUS® Bronze Certified – average efficiency >85%

· Designed for NVIDIA SLI™
· Represents best price/performance ratio
· New PCI-E 8 pin available. (8 pin to 6 pin adaptors included)
· Four independent 12V rails.
· Mesh body Patented construction eliminates all hot spots and extends the life of the unit.
· Complies with latest ATX12V v2.2 form factor.
· Fully compatible with AMD 64 bit and Intel LGA processors.
· Active PFC.
· Gold plated connectors for minimum power loss and optimal conductivity.
· PCI-E (6-pin), PCI-E (8-pin), SATA, Molex with EZ-Grip, floppy, P8 & P4 connectors.
· Modular-Power-Cord (European model only). Patented
· 20 dB(A) under normal load.
· 3 year RTB warranty  

HP has introduced the MediaSmart Server ex485/ex487, the home media server compatible with both Macs and PCs. The MediaSmart Server is based on the Microsoft Windows Home Server platform.

These home servers offer automatically backing up and accessing digital music, videos, photos and documents from multiple computers on a home network. It can remotely stream photos and music to any Internet-connected PC or Mac.

The server includes HP Media Collector, which conveniently schedules the MediaSmart Server to copy and centralize digital files and libraries from networked PCs. iTunes music libraries can be centralized on the server for playback to any networked computer running iTunes.

The server also includes HP Photo Publisher to upload photos to Facebook, Picasa, and Snapfish. These can also backs up networked PCs using the Windows Home Server backup feature, or Macs running Leopard using Apple Time Machine software.

Each server runs an Intel Celeron 2GHz processor with 2GB of RAM. HP MediaSmart Server ex485 offers 750 GB of hard disk storage while the ex487 offers 1.5 TB of storage. Additional drives can be added for up to 9 terabytes.

HP MediaSmart Server ex485 costs $599 while the HP MediaSmart Server ex487 is $749. These can be pre-ordered beginning January 5 from online stores such as Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, Buy.com. The shipment is expected to start in February.

Asus has announced AIR3, which integrates an iPod speaker with Internet radio. The AIR3 is equipped with HDSS (High Definition Sound Standard) certified speakers, and the ETL (Embedded Transmission Line) module within the chambers that provide natural, real and clear sound quality.

The AIR3 is compatible with all iPods (except iPod shuffle) and charges the iPod concurrently while playing audio files. It includes S-Video and composite video outs to display movies and photos from the iPod on TVs and LCD monitors connected. Multimedia players can be connected to the AIR3 via an Aux-In jack located at the back of the AIR3 and the bundled cable.

The internet radio feature is accessed over Wireless LAN 802.11b/g and gives users access to about 10,000 radio stations worldwide with a wide range of categories. It supports UPnP sharing, and thus allows for easy sharing of music with connected computer or users. It also provides weather forecasts for major cities around the world via the Internet.

We are yet to hear about the release date or the price of AIR3.

LG has announced a 14.1 inch LCD panel for notebook PC that is illuminated by sunlight instead of the backlight unit when used outdoors.

LG says the use of selective reflection plates in existing backlight panels enables the switch from reflective mode in a high luminance setting (sunlight) to transmissive mode in a low luminance setting (indoors and at night). The LCD panel allows users to easily switch from backlight use (transmissive mode) to outdoor reflective mode with the touch of a button.

It also provides a significant increase in battery life as the display’s outdoor energy consumption falls to one fourth the level of indoor energy consumption. The display also resolves visibility issues with a contrast ratio exceeding 9:1 when used outdoors in reflective mode.

LG Display will showcase its new 14.1 inch sunlight Illuminated LCD at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2009.

Toshiba has expanded their line up of NAND-flash-based solid state drives with the 2.5-inch 512-GB SSD. Toshiba says the new drives provide a high level of performance and endurance for use in notebook computers, gaming and home entertainment systems.

Toshiba's new line of 43nm NAND SSD family also includes 64GB, 128GB and 256GB units in 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch form factors or as SSD Flash Modules. Toshiba claims the second-generation SSDs offer increased capacity and performance for notebook computers. The drives offer maximum sequential read speed of 240MBps and maximum sequential write speed of 200MBps, enabling an improvement in overall computing experience, and faster boot and application loading times. The AES data encryption prevents unauthorized data access.

"The solid state drive market is evolving rapidly, with higher performance drives to meet market requirements, and differentiated product families targeted for appropriate applications," said Mr. Kiyoshi Kobayashi, Vice President of Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor Company. "This new 43nm SSD family balances value/performance characteristics for its targeted consumer applications, through use of MLC NAND and an advanced controller architecture."

No word on price yet, but Toshiba expects to start mass production in the second quarter in 2009.

Lacie has introduced a new version of its award-winning Ethernet Disk, a network-attached 19-inch rack-mounted storage device, aimed at small and medium business.

The Ethernet Disk features a capacity increase of up to 6TB. It is powered by the Windows XP embedded operating system that provides all the necessary features for data backup, storage and file-sharing through its Gigabit Ethernet connection.

The Lacie Ethernet Disk can support up to 100 users with customizable access rights to different shares, with up to 25 concurrent users. The Ethernet Disk is compatible with Apple Time Machine, allowing Mac users to take advantage of the continuous data protection the software provides.

The Lacie Ethernet Disk ships with Genie Backup Manager ProTM for Windows and Intego Backup Manager ProTM for Mac for scheduled file backups for workstations.

"Backing up data - even mission-critical data - always boils down to making and storing copies of data, located on your primary storage device, onto a secondary device," said Erwan Girard, LaCie Product Manager. "For this reason, the perfect backup companion for your information system should be kept simple and cost-effective. The Lacie Ethernet Disk offers computer backup and recovery, and backs itself up onto a NAS or DAS, all at the best price-per-terabyte ratio in the market. It is therefore an excellent complement to the complex and expensive technology used in front end storage servers."

The 2 TB drive is priced at $749.99, while the 2 TB and 6 TB drives are priced at $1,099.99 and $1,499.99 respectively.

CyberPower has announced Power Video series of custom-built desktop workstations, three models: the XE, XT and high-performance XI. Designed for videographers and video enthusiasts, the Power Video series have been custom-configured to provide a solid platform for high-def video playback, editing and rendering.

All Power Video series feature the Intel’s multi-core processor technology and nVidia or ATi graphics solutions with 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB of DDR2 or DDR3 memory. The PC can then be further customized with a range of SATA II hard drives or hard drive arrays as well as Blu-ray disc burners.

Standard features on each model include IEEE 1394 (DV iLink) and USB ports, a multi-format media card reader, support for 8.5 Dual-Layer DVD burning capability, and Asetek’s Liquid CPU Cooling System for efficient heat dissipation.

The standard configuration on the Power Video XE offers Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 2.4GHz, NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 16X PCI Express video card and 500GB SATA-II 7200RPM hard drive.

The Power Video XT features Intel’s Quad-Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU at 2.83GHz, ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCI-E 16X 512MB video card and a one terabyte, SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM hard drive. An LG Blu-ray burner is included, along with a Sony Blu-ray player.

The pro-model Power Video XI includes a 2.93GHz Core i7 with 12GB of RAM. Both are set on Intel's X58 mainboard with SLI/CrossFireX support. It also offers 12GBs of DDR3 Triple Channel Memory and an ATI Radeon HD 4870 PCI-E 16X 512MB DDR5 video card. It includes a pair of one terabyte SATA II hard drives and a 64 BG 2.5-inch SATA SSD. Standard optical drives include LG’s 6X Blu-Ray Disc Rewriter and a Sony 2X Blu-Ray Player.

All three Power Video systems are available direct from CyberPower, with the XE prices starting at $985, the XT at $1,675 and the XI priced from $2,719.