14 DAY TRIAL // Solid-state drives are good for everything that hard disk drives do, as long as buyers don't mind trading capacity for performance, but there are several sub-types of SSDs, separated by size, capacity and speed.
The ones that Mushkin released a very short time ago aren't the regular sort (2.5-inch), nor are they thin versions of them.
Instead, they use the 1.8-inch form factor, whose price/performance/capacity ratio makes them viable choices only for mission-critical computer products.
Granted, people could go out of their way to get one for their laptop, if they happen to have one that uses such small drives.
Nevertheless, the newcomers are primarily aimed at enterprise and professional customers that run 24x7 environments (servers, data centers).
Obviously, the connectivity interface employed by the Mushkin Chronos GO, as the new units are called, is SATA III (SATA 6.0 Gbps).
"Mushkin continues to push the envelope with higher performance, higher capacity and higher reliability products, and the new line of 1.8-inch Chronos(TM) GO SATA III (6Gbps) SSDs is just one example," said Nicolas Villalobos, director of global marketing at Mushkin Inc.
"With these improvements, the new drives are very well-suited for professionals and for solution providers in demanding environments like digital signage, healthcare and point-of-sale."
Originally, Chronos GO were normal enterprise-class drives, but they were adapted and re-engineered to, in Mushkin's own words, "deliver the highest possible storage capacity in a drive that is optimized for high-performance and ultimate reliability, even in the most demanding 24x7 environments."
Sadly, the company completely avoided specifying transfer speeds, or what controller was used, so we can't know if these are 500+ MB/s SandForce-powered drives or some other sort. The prices aren't known either.