Engineers at Macronix, one of the world's largest flash memory makers, have reportedly developed a new technology that can extend the life of NAND cells by more than a thousand times by simply applying heat. Most of today's flash modules fail after cells have been programmed...

Earlier this year we reviewed OCZ's flagship Vertex 4 SSD which at the time we were lead to believe was based on a second-generation Everest controller developed in-house. Eventually it was revealed and later confirmed by OCZ that the Octane and Vertex 4 drives actually used Marvell controllers with firmware developed in-house by the Indillinx team. While we acknowledged that it was very sneaky on OCZ’s behalf, it also didn’t change things much for us. Regardless of who did or didn't make the controller, the Vertex 4 was still one of the best performers and best values in the high-end SSD segment.

So with the controversy of the Vertex 4 almost behind them, OCZ is finally ready to unveil its first truly in-house SSD controller. It's been three years since Indilinx released a brand new controller and they are doing so today with the Barefoot 3, which is to be featured in OCZ’s latest SSD series known as Vector.

Best Buy offers the Intel 520 Series 180GB SSD for $129.99 with free shipping ($0.72/GB). That's $60 under a July deal and the lowest total price we could find now by $59. Sales tax is added where applicable. Features include read speeds of up to 550MB/s and write speeds of 520MB/s...

MacMall offers the Samsung 256GB 830 Series Serial ATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Internal SSD, model no. MZ-7PC256B/WW, for $167.99 with free shipping ($0.66/GB). That's the lowest total price we could find for this drive by $21, although we saw it for $12 less last month. It features read...

Following up on its Assassin's Creed III 840 Pro promotion (which is still active on Newegg), Samsung has announced that folks who buy one of its new 250GB 840 SSDs will get a free copy of Far Cry 3, which is slated to ship in North America on December 4 (watch for our review...

The major issue with SSD adoption over the past few years has been price, the astronomically high price when you are counting in hundreds of gigabytes. In today's comparison review we are going to look at 8 popular SSDs that cost $100 or less and feature capacities of up to 128GB.

The contenders include the OCZ Vertex 4 128GB, Samsung 840 120GB and Crucial m4 128GB. The most affordable high-capacity SSD featured in our roundup is the Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB, while the OCZ Vertex 4 64GB, Crucial m4 64GB and Samsung 830 64GB should all offer stellar performance for under $80.

TigerDirect offers the OCZ 256GB Agility 4 for $159.99. This $30 mail-in rebate drops it to $129.99. With free shipping, that's $0.51/GB, tied with an August deal, and the best price we've seen for this drive. It's a current price low by $54. This drive features read speeds of up to 420MB/s...

Ending today, TigerDirect offers the OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD for $59.99 with free shipping via the directions below. That's $0.50/GB, tied with a deal from two weeks ago, and the lowest total price we could find by $21. Features include read speeds of up to 550MB/s and write speeds...

As one of its daily deals, TigerDirect offers the AMD Athlon II X4 3GHz Barebones Kit for $239.99. These $20 and $20 mail-in rebates cut it to $199.99. With $11.91 for shipping, that's $38 below a deal from two weeks ago of a similar bundle (which included an AMD quad-core CPU...

With prices falling well below $1 per gigabyte, many enthusiasts can finally justify the luxury of running their operating system and applications off flash storage. SSD shipments have climbed sharply this year, with each quarter topping the previous period by millions of units...

CompUSA stores offer the retail-boxed Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Ivy Bridge Socket H2 Processor, model no. BX80637I53570K, for $179.99 with free shipping. (Micro Center stores charge the same.) That's $10 under an April deal with rebate hassles and one of the least expensive...

Could a few hundred bucks tacked on the top end make a difference between a vanilla ultrabook and something truly special? That's something Acer is willing to gamble on with its latest flagship ultrabook.

The Aspire S5 comes with a beefy Core i7-3517U clocked at 1.9GHz, 4GB of RAM and 256GB of flash storage -- no hybrid caching system here.  In most instances, an SSD is the best component upgrade for any modern system, but Acer took things one step further as the S5 is equipped with two 128GB SSDs in a RAID0 configuration. It goes without saying that the storage subsystem should be blazing fast.

While the Samsung 830 Series and many of its year-old peers may still be attractive, Samsung is ready to move on to bigger and better things. Their new flagship offering, the SSD 840 Pro, is said to refine the 830 Series' firmware with faster random and sustained performance as well as improved reliability.

Since most SSD competitors use the same rehashed components, Samsung has been in a unique position to shake things up over the last few years, and it's done a fine job. We had nearly no expectations for 2010's 470 Series, but we were pleasantly surprised when it dominated our performance charts. Last year's 830 Series gave a repeat performance, so we can only hope the same of the 840 Pro.

Not only are SSDs faster than HDDs, but they also consume less power and generate less heat. They're quieter, more reliable and more compact than their spinning counterparts. Talking about compact...

We recently took notice when Crucial announced its m4 mSATA SSD in a 256GB capacity at under $1/GB. The mSATA drive is tiny compared to Crucial's standard 2.5" m4, and despite the size difference, both 256GB models feature the same read and write speeds of 500MB/s and 260MB/s -- an exciting prospect, indeed. Assuming there are no catches, Crucial's new mSATA offering could become the go-to solution for ultraportable upgrades...