14 DAY TRIAL // Storage specialist company Transcend has just announced the launch of a new SSD that uses single-level cell NAND, and that is targeted for upgrades and collectors. The new solid state drive from Transcend uses the classic IDE interface.
Nowadays, the computing power of most systems sold in the last decade is quite enough for basic computer usage.
A Centrino-based laptop with a 1.6 GHz processor can successfully surf the internet, play music and movies, as well as archive data, convert files and send and receive emails and messages may those be IM, video or audio.
Back in the days of the Pentium launch, there was a clear performance difference between a 486-based computer and a Pentium system.
Take a high-quality mp3 file for example. A Pentium computer would play the file just fine for a simple audition, while a 486 would not be able to do so.
Paying the 1,000 dollar price premium for a Pentium system was easy to explain in the eyes of the uninformed buyer.
Now, it’s quite difficult to show a basic user why he should pay 2,000 dollars for a computer when a 300-dollar system would do the job just fine.
Most such users, or the users that just like their old systems and don’t want to give them up, will likely invest in a RAM upgrade and now Transcend also offers them a storage upgrade option.
Installing an SSD in an old IDE system that has an ATA100 or ATA133 interface will make it much more responsive, and it will also prolong the useful life of the system.
The Transcend PSD520 SSD has ten times the durability of a MLC model and with a UDMA 6 interface it is the perfect upgrade solution for industrial systems.
The device will read data at a low 119 MB/s speed and will write it at around 102 MB/s.
It’s quite disappointing Transcend’s SSD is so “crippled” performance-wise.
We would have liked to see speeds over 133 MB/s so that the ATA133 interface would be saturated, but it seems that performance is not too desirable at Transcend.
The price has not been made public yet, but we don’t think it will be too affordable.