Panasonic announced today that they will begin shipping the first 100GB BD-RE XL media (LM-BE100J) to the Japanese market on April 15th. These new triple-layer, rewritable Blu-ray discs are fully compliant with the BDXL specification and can hold about 12 hours of terrestrial digital HD (17 Mbps) or 8 hours and 40 minutes of BS Digital HD (24 Mbps) video. Panasonic's new BD-RE XL media also features a special coating that helps protect against dirt, fingerprints, scratches and dents.

Panasonic has not released pricing yet. However, the discs are expected to cost about 10,000 Yen ($119US) a piece. Yikes!

Mach Xtreme Technology Inc., a worldwide leader in top performance, high reliability and user friendly designed PC components, today unveiled the 1.8" micro-SATA MX-MDS Series SSD. Based on the best-in-class SandForce SF1222 controller, the 1.8" MX-MDS Series delivers an enhanced mobile computing experience with much faster application loading, ultra-fast data access, shorter boot-ups, and longer battery life of all laptops with micro-SATA interface.

This series maintains the highest level of read and write performance though the life of the SSD. Highly intelligent block management and wear leveling optimizes longevity of MX-MDS series drives. The MDS series supports DuraClass, DuraWrite and unique RAISE technologies. DuraClass technology provides best-in-class endurance, performance, and low power. DuraWrite technology extends the endurance of MLC memory providing at least 5 year lifecycles with 3-5K cycle MLC flash. RAISE provides the protection and reliability of RAID on a single drive without the significant write overhead.

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G.Skill International Co. Ltd., manufacturer of extreme performance memory and solid-state storage with solid quality, today announces its new Phoenix EVO SSD, utilizing the performance leading controller SandForce SF-1222 and high quality 2xnm NAND flash chips. The Phoenix EVO drive contains 115GB with rated speed of read/write 280/270 MB/sec, and will be available via G.Skill authorized distribution partners in early April.

Keeping pace with the flash manufacturers’ transition from 3xnm to 2xnm, G.Skill has utilized 2xnm flash chips for its award winning SSD, Phoenix family. To ensure the best performance and reliability during the transition, G.Skill has teamed up closely with SandForce and has run G.Skill Phoenix EVO through a wide range of rigorous tests with the latest firmware. All Phoenix EVO drives only use strictly selected original flash chips from key suppliers to guarantee the top reliability and stability.

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QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world-class NAS servers, NVR Video Surveillance Systems, and Network-based Media Players today announced expansion of their popular Business Series lineup of Turbo NAS servers, to include the new TS-x59 Pro II series: the 4-drive TS-459 Pro II, the 5-drive TS-559 Pro II, and the 6-drive TS-659 Pro II. The TS-x59 Pro II lineup sports the powerful yet energy-efficient dual-core Intel® Atom™ D525 1.8GHz processor along with 1GB of DDRIII RAM (expandable to 3GB). In addition to powerful processors, the new models are the first in the industry to support SATA 6Gb/s hard drives. Also new is USB 3.0 support, ensuring internal and external hard drives deliver the highest performance possible.

The new models ship with new V3.4 of QNAP’s renowned NAS management software, supporting all-in-one server applications such as file sharing, FTP server, printer sharing (LAN and Internet), web server, and even video surveillance. Other advanced features include backup to cloud storage including real-time synchronization of any changed files stored on the NAS to the cloud with versioning control, Real-time Remote Replication (RTRR) for disaster recovery and ease of content delivery among HQ and branches, advanced access right control for ease of management, and so on. All of these powerful features are conveniently compacted into a small machine, which can be easily deployed and quietly operate in a typical office environment, even without a server room. These brand new business series NAS models are an ideal solution for high performance, cross-platform file sharing, and the most comprehensive iSCSI/IP-SAN storage solution available for virtualization environment.

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