Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"SanDisk Corporation today unveiled its third-generation family of solid-state drives (SSDs). Using multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory technology, SanDisk's G3 Series establishes new benchmarks in performance and price-performance leadership in the SSD industry. Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs) in notebook PCs, the initial members in the SanDisk G3 family are SSD C25-G3 and SSD C18-G3 in the standard 2.5" and 1.8" form factors respectively, each available with a SATA-II interface. Available in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB*, the unit MSRPs are $149, $249 and $499, respectively."

The press release goes on to say that the G3 series SSDs are more than five times faster than 7200rpm hard drives, and more than twice as fast as any of the SSDs that were shipping in 2008. What impresses me is the price: 60 GB for $149 USD is quite reasonable. No, you're not going to see these SSDs in any $599 notebooks this year, but SanDisk is offering a lot of performance for not too many dollars. I can't wait for this time next year when we'll likely see 500+ GB SSDs and, more importantly, average-priced computers start to ship with SSDs. I have yet to own a computer with an SSD in it, but I think that's going to happen in 2009...what about you?

"SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today introduced an innovative new family of SanDisk® USB flash drives, including the world's first backup USB flash drive with simple backup software activation at the touch of a button. The SanDisk Ultra® Backup USB portable flash drive is the first offering of the company's new SanDisk Ultra USB product line. With capacities up to 64 gigabytes1 (GB), the SanDisk Ultra Backup USB flash drive is designed to protect computer users' photos, music, videos, personal and business documents, and other types of digital files, with the simple touch of a button. No software installation is needed. The drive protects onboard digital content with a dual layer of security, including password-protected access control and ultra-secure AES hardware-based encryption."

The new SanDisk Ultra USB product line includes new encrypted flash drives designed for easy backup. It looks like an interesting solution with capacities up to 64GB. Personally, I backup to a Windows Home Server and online with Mozy, but if you want to keep your data with you at all times this might be a good option. It will be interesting to see how the release product actually performs.

"Earlier this year SanDisk introduced a new format to deliver music called slotMusic. This is simply a 1GB microSD card with DRM-free digital files on it. This format is backed by some of the major record labels such as EMI, Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner. To go along with this new format SanDisk has introduced the slotMusic player. This memory-less and screen-less player relies solely on microSD for music playback. The idea is that non-tech savvy users will be able to swap out their purchased slot music albums. I don’t believe that slotMusic will revolutionize the music industry, but may do well in certain niche markets. Aside from the new music format, the player itself is an interesting story."

Given that there are similar flash based MP3 players with 1 GB of storage for around the same price, the market seems pretty limited. This looks more like an MP3 player designed for people without a computer. But if you are into hacking hardware, check out the article. From the hardware side, it actually looks pretty well made so there might be some interesting DIY projects based on this in the future.

"SanDisk Corporation today set a new speed record of 30 megabytes per second1 for SD flash memory cards with the introduction of the SanDisk Extreme® III 30MB/s Edition line of SDHC Cards. The new cards, expected to be available worldwide in September in 4-gigabyte (GB)2, 8GB and 16GB capacities, are designed to deliver peak performance when used with the new digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera, Nikon D90. The Nikon D90 is the industry's first DSLR camera to support SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s Edition SDHC cards at increased performance. Featuring a 50-percent speed boost from previous 20MB/s cards, the new SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s Edition SDHC card makes it possible to record 39 images in continuous shooting mode at 4.5 frames per second with a file size of 6.0 MB JPEG L Fine per image.3 The Nikon D90 camera captures high-resolution, 12.3 megapixel still images, and it is Nikon's first DSLR to offer movie recording capability."

30 MB per second? Nice - if only because it will push the the prices of their 20 MB/s Extreme II cards. I really like SanDisk cards, and have never had trouble with any of them, but they tend to be really pricey in comparison to other brands. Of course, maybe that's why - you tend to get what you pay for.

"Solid state disk (SSD) news has been coming in fast during the past few weeks. Most of the big revelations have been at the low-end of the SSD market with multi-level cell (MLC) based products, but single-level cell (SLC) based products have had their fair share of coverage as well. Despite the hype surrounding the promising technology, SanDisk is placing blame on Windows Vista for not providing enough of a speed boost when using SSDs. SanDisk CEO Eli Harari went so far as to say that Vista is the reason why SanDisk is being left behind by competing solutions."

What do you do when your products don't perform as fast as the competition? You blame Windows Vista of course! Blaming Vista seems to be the thing to do, but apparently even under Windows XP the SanDisk SSD products perform poorly. So what mythical, market-leading OS did SanDisk design their products for?

"The Sansa View is SanDisk’s flagship flash MP3 player with the ability to playback video on its 240x320 64k color screen. What makes the Sansa View interesting is its high capacity flash memory along with memory expansion putting it in close rivalry to hard drive based players. The other thing going for the View is the “bang for the buck” factor. It may not be a high end player, but it is one of the best values on the market."



I really like the idea behind these being expandable. It is a pretty good value to start with (the 16 GB version is cheaper than the 8 GB Zune), but in a year or two, you might find the capacity too small. By that point in time you should be able to pick up a cheap microSD card and be able to double the storage for not much extra cash.