Hot Hardware: Super Talent is no stranger to USB 3.0. The company has been producing USB 3.0 gear for some time now. But now they're breaking a price barrier. The company has just announced that their USB 3.0 Express Duo has broken the $15 price barrier. A USB 3.0 drive for under $20? That's a trend we can get behind.
Maximum PC: You probably haven't given much thought to upgrading your tablet PC's built-in storage, primarily because your hands are tied. If you need more storage, you can buy a microSD card (if your tablet supports it), use an external USB storage device (again, if your tablet supports it), or tap into the cloud. But what if you could swap out the built-in SSD for a faster, more capacious model? That's wishful thinking at the moment, but if companies like Super Talent keep releasing performance-oriented mSATA drives, perhaps tablet makers will take notice.
Maximum PC: Solid state drives (SSDs) are rather simple devices that you plug into your PC and fill with data. Not all SSDs are created equal, however, and Super Talent's latest twist on flash based storage is a dual-interface design. In addition to a SATA II interface, Super Talent's new UltraDrive MX2 SSDs also feature a mini-USB connection. What's the point? To make upgrading easy, Super Talent says.
Hot Hardware - At this time last year, USB 2.0 hard drives were all the rage. Just 12 months later, and now a whole bunch of new external HDDs have USB 3.0 support. And it's about time! Throughout the year, we have wondered why laptop and desktop makers weren't supporting USB 3.0 with any real frequency. Even today, loads of new notebooks are shipping with one (or none) USB 3.0 ports. We realize that not every USB peripheral will need to take advantage of the extra speed (mice and keyboards come to mind), but since they're backwards compatible, we see no real reason not to load up on them.
