I had almost thought I might never see it and truly can’t stand by what might happen down the road, but Samsung had their ‘pre-production’ Series 9 ultrabook on display at Pepcom with it’s own Samsung XP941 PCIe M.2 SSD, performing at 1GB/s.  To those not familiar with Samsung, they value their business relationships dearly and the XP941 PCIe SSD …

It has been almost a year since Crucial/Micron introduced their new M500 family and, with that, came the news of what we then termed as a new Crucial M500 NGFF SSD that would be introduced to retail consumers.  Today, many are now searching for high-capacity M.2 SSDs both for their purchase and upgrade of new M.2 SSD contained systems, and …

Super Talent has once again been busy behind the scenes and their newest entries into the SSD market include a new M.2 NGFF design called the DX1. Anything but ordinary, the STT DX1 is available as a SATA M.2 SSD (known as the STT NGFF DX1), or that of a PCIe X1 interface where a SATA 3 SSD is routed …

Over the past while, there seems to be an increased interest in our M.2 SSD testing, whether it be with respect to our thoughts on M.2 placement in the industry, ideas on how it best be introduced, or just plain “Where can I get a M.2 SSD?” concerns.  Unfortunately, we cannot elaborate on purchase ‘just yet’ but we thought we …

So I am a few thousand miles above beautiful California and the 2013 LSI Accelerating Innovations Summit. I can’t help but reflect on the confusion that still exists concerning the standardization of M.2 SSDs, regardless of how many times we try to explain this in our reports (1, 2, 3).  If you are confused and not an industry professional, don’t …

CODENAME GRIFFIN Since our discovery of the next gen LSI SandForce flash controller at Computex earlier this year, it has been the talk of the storage world.  Codenamed Griffin, ADATA displayed both enterprise and M.2 ultrabook SSD prototypes of the controller at their event display without mention or word to anyone, almost daring the storage world to take note.  It …

The practice of using unbranded peripherals in computers is common.  Apple does this and carries things a step further by demanding that components, such as the SSDs, are proprietary to a specific build only. Not only can the SSD in Apple’s new Mac products not be upgraded with third-party SSDs, but also, they can’t even be switched off with SSDs …

SONY ULTRABOOK PRO 13 CONFIGURATIONS DIFFER A few weeks back, we published our review of the Sony VAIO Pro 13 ultrabook where we discovered that there were two different configurations of the VAIO being shipped, that with a SATA 3 M.2 SSD and that with a native M.2 PCIe SSD.  Not only did the system that we received contain a …

UNDERSTANDING SATA M.2 AND NATIVE M.2 PCIE SSDS By now, many are aware that there is a new SSD standard known as NGFF or M.2.  NGFF is actually a slang term that started the process rolling and means ‘next generation form factor’.  If you have been following our reviews as of late, you would have also learned that, within the …

A few weeks back, we posted an article that stated our opinion of the new Apple MBA as being one of the top ultraportable laptops available today, and quite possibly, untouchable.  The backlash from Sony fans was amazing, many clearly noting that we hadn’t tested, or included, the new VAIO 13 Pro as a comparison system in that report…and they …