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One of our favorite stops at CES consistently seems to be the Other World Computing Booth where Larry O’Connor and Team always seem to have something new on the go in the world of SSDs. This year was no different.
First off, the OWC team has always been on the cutting edge of Apple SSD updates, regardless of Apple’s frequent SSD interface changes that are intended to keep Apple customers looking in only one direction for their SSD upgrade needs…Apple. The downfall of sticking with Apple alone is two sided, the price upgrade being a steep consideration but also, with Apple there is no return of your original SSD after migration. That’s right; they keep it.
As shown here with the new Retina MacBook Pro (rMBP) upgrade to the Mercury Aura Pro and Envoy Pro External Case, one can easily complete a very affordable upgrade by simply following the OWC Aura Pro Migration Video, retain their additional SSD for additional storage inside the Envoy and save big. If a significant price drop when choosing the OWC upgrade to that of Apple, coupled with the fact that you keep your original SSD only with the OWC migration, isn’t enough to convince you, nothing will.
In addition to the rMBP Mercury Aura Pro, OWC also had a prototype of their soon to be released Viper SSD on display. The Mercury Viper will be available in 2.5 or 3.5 form factors and the larger of the two will enable capacities as high as 2TB to be available in an SSD for the first time that we are aware of.
The Viper will be an ‘LSI SandForce Driven’ solution capable of 600MB/s performance and capacities ranging from 240Gb to 2TB. The thought of having four 2TB SSD solutions in our workstation for a total of 8TB is enough to make anyone drool and should be very appealing to those that rely on Mac for their graphics intensive applications and storage. Keep in mind though that this solution will be as comfortable in a PC as it would a Mac!
Last but not least, I wanted to speak to a non-SSD item that OWC had at their booth, one that we have used at the office for some time now and is probably one of my top tech toys on hand to date. It is called the Newer Technology Power2U AC/USB Outlet and it allows you to charge up to four devices at any given time from your power outlet, two being USB! The Power2U is only $14.99 at the OWC site and, in my opinion anyway, is probably the best option available for powering USB devices.
