Those tiny, bare, case-less SSD drives in Apple's new MacBook Airs? They're made by Toshiba, and now they're available to save space inside any computer, not just Apple's.
For proof that the hotness of a product name is in inverse proportion to its good looks and desirability, take a look at the picture above while considering the over-the-top moniker Toshiba has chosen for this dorky strip of chips: the Blade X-gale. The units come in three capacities, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB, and while they use the same SATA interface as a regular hard drive or SSD, their nakedness means they're tiny. All models measure 24mm x 109mm. The two smaller units are just 2.2mm thick, while the 256GB drive is a still-skinny 3.7mm. For the old-fashioned amongst you, one inch equals 25.4mm.
Read speed is a healthy, spinning-disk beating 220MB/s, and the drives can lay down the bits at 180MB/s.
A lack of price info from Toshiba hints that these sticks will likely be showing up inside notebooks and fancier netbooks before you and I can buy them direct, but we can see a day soon when storage is bought the same way as RAM is bought today. That is, mailed to you in a chip-exposed form that makes you scared to open the transparent anti-static bag it comes in. Available (but not to you) now.
Blade X-gale press release [Toshiba]
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