Kingston has joined with Sandforce to launch a top-end solid state disk (SSD) drive for the "turbo market" of hardcore gamers. It also showed off a wireless storage add-on for IOS users that can help share content and extend the limited capacity of their Iphones and Ipads.
Sitting down with The INQUIRER at Computex, Kingston seemed pretty pleased that it has managed to team up with one of the most respected names in SSD controllers.
The resulting 120GB and 240GB SSDs will ship under Kingston's Hyperx brand and feature Sandforce SF-2281 controllers with a SATA 3.0 6Gbits/s interface.
It's something of a departure for Kingston, which has been best known for regular SSD products aimed more at the mass market, but by pairing the second generation Sandforce controller with Intel 25nm NAND flash that offers 5,000 rewrite cycles, the target audience is the enthusiast end of the market.
In short, the drive will perform quicker and last longer than your average SSD, according to the firm.
Available as a bundle with the Hyperx Upgrade Kit for easy installation, the product could prove popular for Kingston.
The same might also be said of its Wi-Drive, which The INQUIRER also had a look at during Computex. Looking almost like a 3G Iphone without a screen, the WiFi enabled NAND Flash based external storage device provides users with extra capacity for less money than buying a new device.
More usefully, it is possible to share content via the device with at least three people, possibly more unless that content is video, meaning the device has the potential to appeal to small business users who are keen to share documents with co-workers or partners.
As Kingston marketing manager David Leong explained, it's effectively a wireless USB link that allows users to drag and drop their content from a PC to the Wi-Drive and then access that content from their mobile Apple device via the free app.
