Plextor, a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media equipment, announces new products as a part of its new 2008 lineup. Featured in the new offering are 6x Blu-Ray Combo drives, 22x Super Multi DVD±RW drives, and an 8x Slim External USB DVD±RW for PC and Mac.

“Plextor continues to strengthen its position in the optical storage market with the addition of these new drives to its already robust line of products,” said Bob Gronski, vice president of sales and marketing for Plextor. “Now more than ever, people are going out less and taking advantage of home entertainment more, so it’s a perfect time for us to introduce such an extensive line of products.”

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Samsung announced today that it has begun mass producing 256 GB solid state drives (SSDs). According to Samsung's claims, this new 2.5-inch SSD offers twice the performance of its 64GB and 128GB SSDs. The drive is capable of 220 MB/s read and 200 MB/s write speeds, allowing it to store 250GB worth of high-def movies in just 21 minutes.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing 256 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives for use in notebooks and desktop PCs. With the addition of the high-speed 256GB drive, Samsung now offers the most extensive line of SSDs in the industry with 8, 16, and 32GB SSDs for low-density designs and 64, 128 and 256GB alternatives for the higher densities.

The new 256GB SSD more than doubles the performance rates of Samsung 64GB and 128GB SSDs to become the SSD with the highest overall performance in the personal computer industry, combining sequential read rates of 220MB/s (megabytes per second) with sequential write rates of 200MB/s. This sharply narrows the performance gap between read and write operations to only 10 percent, compared to a read-write speed difference of between 20 and 70 percent for other SSDs. In addition, erase cycles are a rapid 100GBs per minute, allowing the entire drive to be re-written much faster, when needed.

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Reuters recently interviewed the president of Sony Electronics' U.S. operations, Stan Glasgow. In the interview, Glasgow stated that Blu-ray player sales have fallen short of Sony's expectations. Along with the tough economy, player sales have been hampered by the high price of Blu-ray titles.

High definition Blu-ray disc players may be one of the holiday season's best sellers, but they will still fall short of expectations, due to the tough economy, the head of Sony's U.S. electronics unit said.

Sales of the next-generation movies players, developed by Sony and sold under brands including Panasonic and Samsung, could benefit from a late shopping spurt as budget conscious U.S. consumers find deals, Stan Glasgow told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

But they will not meet the worldwide target of 5 million units, most of which had been expected to sell in the United States.

Kanguru Solutions sent out a press release today, announcing the release of the Kanguru e-Flash. This high-performance flash drive is available with 16GB or 32GB of storage and features both eSATA and USB connections. According to the specs on Kanguru's website, the e-Flash is capable of 75MB/s and 25MB/s write speeds when connected to a computer via eSATA.

Kanguru Solutions, announces the release of the Kanguru e-Flash™, a cutting edge flash drive with both eSATA and USB connectivity.

Utilizing eSATA (External Serial ATA) technology allows the Kanguru e-Flash to achieve performance speeds never before obtainable with standard USB Flash Drives. This performance, coupled with large storage capacities means the Kanguru e-Flash can handle any application or data file, regardless of size. In addition to eSATA, it also contains a USB2.0 connection for universal connectivity to virtually any computer.

The Kanguru e-Flash has a powered eSATA connection so it doesn’t require any additional power source. It also comes packaged with an eSATA + Power bracket and an eSATA + Power cable for easy hookup to the computer you use it on most. Capacities are available in 16GB or 32GB with 64GB planned for January 2009.

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