SSDs play catch-up with flash

WHILE THERE WASN'T anything groundbreaking in the memory field at CES, all of the big players had new or evolutionary devices to show off. Here is the best of Corsair, Sandisk, Kingston and Supertalent, in the order that we ran into them.

Corsair had two and a half new products at the show, the half is because we only saw a picture of the product. The biggest news is that they now have a Voyager drive in 64G capacity.

Oddly though, the drive is big - about twice as long as the 32G version, and a bit wider. We don't have an explanation as to why it is bigger, it just is.

Gamers will likely love the new red topped Dominator, technically called the GT line. They will be DDR3/2000 @ CL7 timings, and likely due to chip quantity, will be very limited. They are only going to be sold on the Corsair web site, so get them while you can.

The big announcement from Sandisk was something called the Sansa Slotradio.

The idea is simple, you get a simplified MP3 player, and a special flash disk stuffed with 1000 songs for $99.99. The target market is a replacement for radio when you put it on shuffle. Each additional card will have a new set of songs, so you just pick up more music for less than $.10 a track.

The music is DRM'd to the eyeballs and will only work with the Slotradio, they are not MP3s. Once again, DRM makes an interesting product worthless, proving piracy gives you a better product. When will the MAFIAA learn? Avoid this one.

On the less offensive side, we have a 16G MicroSD card. It is a class 4 SDHC, so it is reasonably fast, and it is branded as a Mobile Ultra. Along side that, they have replacement/upgrade SSDs for netbooks. The form factor is a card with an edge connector, most netbooks use them now. They come in 8, 16, 32 and 64G models, price is determined by the whims of the flash gods.

Last up, Sandisk has a single button backup drive as well, but instead of the button being on the USB dock, it is on the drive itself. There were a few at Sandisk, so we would expect them to be out before the Corsair version.

Kingston had two things of note to show off, an SSD and some gaming memory. The SSD is a rebranded Intel SSD, which means it is stinking fast, the fastest on the market in fact. We are in the middle of testing them, and they are quite amazing. Since the difference between the two version is the case badging, you can't go wrong with this.

The last one is the now somewhat mandatory fins on high performance memory. Some of the HyperX parts sport Dominator type fins on top, but these look to be taken from the heat spreader rather than the PCB like Corsair. In any case, the fanboys get what the fanboys want.

That brings us to Supertalent, and they had one new line on the high end called Luxio. It is a high end flash drive that comes in 16, 32 and 64G sizes, and are fairly speedy, with 30MBps read and 20MBps write speeds.

Luxio comes in three colours, has a leather case, and is made of a harder than normal plastic case. The one odd part is the cap isn't symmetrical, it was either that or make the whole thing thicker. We'll take thin every time.

In the end, nothing groundbreaking, just a lot of evolutionary pieces. With flash prices in the toilet, 64G sticks are becoming affordable, and fast SSDs are not far behind. Good things do come from bad times. µ