OCZ Rolls Out Affordable SSDs

By Geoff Duncan Published December 11, 2008

Component maker OCZ Technology has decided to get into the solid-state drive business, announcing its Vertez series of SSDs that act as drop-in replacements for standard 2.5-inch SATA-II hard drives…at prices that give some serious competition to other SSD solutions on the market.

“The new Vertex Series of SSD drives are a premium MLC based SSD solution that are designed for consumers that require fast, rugged, and reliable solid state storage,” commented OCZ director of product management Eugene Chang, in a statement.. “The Vertex makes use of our newest architecture and controller design complete with 64MB of cache to offer faster transfers and superior overall system response times in a broad range of applications and games.”

Recommended Videos

Thew drives feature a lightweight alloy housing, have no moving parts (one of the key virtues of SSDs), and offer an estimated 1.5 million-hour MBTF (mean time before failure). The Vertex drives offer read speeds of up to 200 MB/s, write speeds up to 160MB/s, and an average seek time under one tenth of a millisecond. The drives consume 2 Watts of power in use and half a Watt on standby, and can be configured in RAID arrays.

But the best part might be the pricing: the Vertex drives are available in 30, 60, 120, and 250 GB capacities at $129, $249, $469, and $869, respectively. The drives come with a two-year warranty.

Former Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

Deepfake bosses are crashing video calls, and researchers are trying to expose them

Seeing your boss on video no longer proves they are real

Researchers at Fraunhofer SIT are fighting against deepfake meeting video calls

Entering into a meeting with your boss and several familiar coworkers inside a video conference is the next area vulnerable to cybercrimes, and it's all because of deepfake technology. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT are working on a real-time warning system designed to identify attempted fraud during corporate video conferences.

The report states that criminals are increasingly targeting video meetings for identity theft and financial scams, taking advantage of the trust people place in familiar faces and voices. The intention is to flag suspicious activity while the meeting is still taking place. This gives an employee a chance to stop before following an expensive instruction from an AI-generated executive.

Computing

Apple will finally stop making iPhone-to-Windows copy-paste such a chore

Your iPhone may finally copy and paste with a Windows PC like it should

Apple Universal Clipboard feature

Copying something on an iPhone and pasting it onto a Windows PC should be one of the least remarkable features imaginable. While this simple process seems effortless between an iPhone and Mac, Windows users are still left waiting.

Now, Microsoft is formally asking Apple to provide interoperable clipboard access through the company’s European Union interoperability process. The request, submitted on March 25, argues that iOS restrictions prevent third-party platforms from creating an experience comparable to Apple’s Universal Clipboard. Apple has now reached Phase III and committed to developing a solution.

Computing

Chrome wants more extension reviews, but good ratings won’t keep malware out

Google is testing built-in extension review prompts, but good ratings can still hide malware

malicious-google-chrome-extensions-on-web-store

Google is preparing to add extension review links directly inside Chrome, putting feedback closer to the menus people already use to manage their add-ons.

A Chromium change, first spotted by Windows Report, points to review options in the Extensions menu, the chrome://extensions management page, and extension context menus. Only eligible Chrome Web Store extensions in good standing would qualify, and the feature is still under development.