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Lexar Express SSD Has Backup Intent |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Wednesday, 02 May 2007 |
Lexar entrance into the Solid State Disc (SSD) business is housed in an Express Card that is destined to take backup and removable laptop storage to a new level of mobility with a form factor half the size of traditional PC Card (PCMCIA) solutions.
To sweeten a rather steep 'early adopter' price point the company has
put on the new product for its Australian release Lexar is bundling an
automated backup solution with the product placing it within the
corporate buyers' mindset.
The Lexar ExpressCard SSD might be available from Available from the
usual major retailers in Australia (Officeworks, Myer, Harvey Norman)
but the pricing is clearly a business buy with 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB
capacities on offer priced (suggested retail) at A$199.95 for 4GB
capacity and A$329.95 for 8GB. Top of the range 16GB is yours for
A$549.95 (all pricing includes GST).
On the plus side, Lexar describes the product as low-cost, which it
probably is if you look at a cost per MB, or compare the device to
other Solid State Discs currently on offer. Laptop manufacturers are
beginning to offer internal 32GB SSD drives in their high-end laptops
and the option typically adds US$500 plus to the price including the
cost the manufacturer saves on the traditional spinning disk they would
be able to remove.
You decide if it's worth it, but the Gizmodo product review wasn't entirely complementary (they have photo's too). It notes that the write performance was a piddling 3MBps (read was better at 15MBps). Well, yawn!
The Lexar Express
Card is certainly
diminutive though. The device is half the size of a PC Card and not much
bigger than a USB thumb drive. And in addition to its back-up
credentials it supports Windows Vista's ReadyBoost, a Vista feature that improves
system performance without having to add DRAM to computers.
Under this system the
card operates as an additional memory cache, which is a
reserve section of memory that the computer can access faster than if
it were accessing data from the hard disk drive.
Once you have set up the
auto-backup software that comes with the card it will do a daily,
weekly, or monthly backup without user intervention. Lexar says the
setup lets the user select what needs to be backed up according to
folder or file types and the one card is able to support multiple
machines by recognising the computer name and the appropriate backup
setting for each computer.
Farshid Tabrizi, General Manager, USB Products noted:
"The ExpressCard standard is the ideal form factor for leveraging PC
card technology and providing notebook users with a simple, more
reliable way to significantly boost system performance. With
auto-backup software, the Lexar ExpressCard SSD will be especially
appealing for traveling business people, small- and home-office owners,
and anyone who wants a secure, hassle-free way to backup important
documents and literally add more storage to their laptop.
"The Lexar ExpressCard SSD also does away with the external cables
necessary for external HDDs or the awkwardness of UFDs sticking out of
your laptop. We believe ExpressCard technology clearly represents the
new generation for plug-in cards and is destined to replace current PC
Card technology. In fact, many new laptops are already shipping with
dedicated ExpressCard slots, including Dell, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens,
HP, Intel, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Sony, Texas Instruments,
and Toshiba."
"The ExpressCard delivers higher levels of performance and
functionality to laptops. Lexar is a member of PCMCIA (Personal
Computer Memory Card International Association) which created the
ExpressCard Standard, and one of the first to introduce ExpressCard SSD
to the market. It is a good example of how we are driving technical
development of the next-generation storage and backup solution for
personal computers," said Mathew Luu, Marketing Manager of Lexar Media
ANZ & South Asia.
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