Have a nine-inch Asus Eee PC or Dell Mini 9? Feeling let down by the included storage solution? Then Super Talent has something for you: two lines of new solid-state drive upgrades with high performance ratings and prices starting under $100.
For Eee PCs (900, 901, 901A, 901 Go, and S101 models, specifically), Super Talent claims its new SATA Mini 2 PCIe drives are "the world’s fastest upgrade SSDs." The multi-level-cell drives have top performance ratings of 150MB/s for sequential reads and 100MB/s for sequential writes, so that may not be too far from the truth.
Super Talent offers MLC-based SATA Mini 2 PCIe drives in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities with prices of $86, $126, and $220, respectively. All of ’em fit into PCI Express Mini connectors, though the firm mentions a 300MB/s Serial ATA interface.
What about Dell’s Mini 9? For that system, Super Talent offers Half Mini 2 PCIe drives with capacities ranging all the way up to 128GB. The drives use a "custom IDE/PATA" interface, and they’re a little slower than their Eee PC-bound counterparts. Super Talent quotes 80MB/s for sequential reads and 40MB/s for sequential writes. Still, that’s purportedly a seven-fold improvement in sequential write speeds and a twofold improvement for sequential writes.
Prices are $75 for the 16GB model, $110 for 32GB, $200 for 64GB, and $380 for 128GB.
Finally, Super Talent has also announced variants of the Eee PC and Mini 9 drives with single-level-cell flash memory. Those have higher performance ratings and longer warranties (two years instead of three years), but they’re likely priced at a premium, as well. Super Talent says SLC drives "are in high demand for small embedded designs and ruggedized PC applications."