14 DAY TRIAL // As end-users probably know, the biggest problem with solid state drives is that they are a fair bit more expensive that hard drives, and since this is the one thing that has prevented them from taking off as a market, OWC decided it would at least offer a 40GB Mercury Extreme Pro model that didn't bleed customers' wallets dry.
Even though iSupply predicts that NAND prices will drop to $1 per Gigabyte by the end of the year, current price points are still rather high.
As such, solid state drives, especially fast ones like those powered by the SandForce controller, are quite expensive.
Thus, OWC called upon users' need for affordability when it imagined the latest Mercury Extreme Pro model.
Like its siblings, this unit makes use of the popular SanForce SF-1200 controller chip, the same one that made it into most of the competing products currently on sale.
It is this chip that lets the newcomer read and write data at the ground-shaking speeds of 285 MB/s and 275 MB/s, respectively.
These data transfer rates are achieved while communicating via the SATA 3.0 Gbps interface.
The other major asset of the product is its high endurance rating, made evident by the MTTF (mean time to failure) of 2 million hours.
Needless to say, the 40GB Mercury Pro has full support for the Windows 7 TRIM command, which preserves performance over time, by cleaning up deleted sectors before they can clutter up the drive.
Backed up by a three-year warranty, OWC's latest creation has already been made available for purchase at $99.99.
No doubt it will perform especially well as a boot drive, in those systems where speed is paramount. Consumers interested in the benefits that this electronic can bring need only visit the official website should they feel inclined to place an order.