Unfortunately, in addition to the expense, it can’t be used as a bootable drive quite yet, although Fusion-io claims that feature is coming. And we probably shouldn’t gloss over the expense — yeah, it’s a “consumer drive” and it’s cheap compared to similar drives, but it’s still $US900 for 80GB. But it’s a cool look at where storage could be headed, and if you’ve got enough money to snag one (available at Amazon), well, I hate you lots. [HotHardware via Engadget]

Both the the Shift: Intel P55 and the Shift: Intel X58 are powered by Intel Core i7 900 processors running Windows 7. ATI Radeo HD and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards are featured, and I’m sure the discerning gamer expects nothing less.

Storage options include up to six mechanical or 12 SSD drives. The two diverge on memory specs, with the P55 containing up to 8GB DDR3-1600 low latency RAM and the X58 up to 12GB DDR3-2000 or 24GB DDR3-1600. DVD or Blu-Ray drives are options for both rigs while a standard Asetek closed-loop liquid cooling system keeps things chilled.

Pricing begins at an optimistic $US2199 and $US2599, respectively, although with all the options listed above, that can (and probably will) climb much, much higher. Since Shift is the only PC that Maingear is going to focus on selling from now on, I hope it works it out for them.

According to Computer World, the three-year-old company claims that the drive can be used non-stop for five years without slowdown. Apparently the mojo behind the Lightning EFD LS (and the slightly slower, 2.5-inch EFD LB) is that it uses a proprietary ASIC design that relies on a SCSI data transfer interface, as opposed to the more common Fibre Channel interface. As a result they’re currently able to achieve speeds of 6 gigabits per second (vs. the 4 Gb/s that Fibre Channel provides).

While it is available now for companies to purchase, it seems that the product has yet to be tested independently, so the accuracy of those speed claims are uncertain. [Pliant via Computer World via Slashdot]

According to ComputerWorld, when you change the password, then reboot, the drive becomes inoperable and you can’t access your data. Intel is holding shipments until they can issue a firmware update, and get the hardware back on track—which they expect to happen in the next couple of weeks. [ComputerWorld via Slashdot]

What’s different? Intel is now using 16GB flash packages instead of 8GB packages, the DRAM size went up (yet clock speed went down?), and the black goo used over the prior generation’s controller has been cleaned up.

All these changes boil down to no improvement on sequential read performance, a 7% improvement in sequential write performance, a 10% improvement in random read performance, and a whopping 40% increase in speed in random write performance.

Conclusion? The X25-M G2 seems like it lives up to Intel’s bragging as it’s about 0-40% faster than the last generation drive based on AnandTech’s testing. This translates to an improvement of 0-10% in the real world. We were hoping for awesome improvement, but we’re happy to have at least gotten some improvement. [AndandTech]

They tested seven 2.5-inch 128GB SSDs with SATA that ranged in price between $US200 and $US450. In the end the OCZ Vertex came out on top in terms of overall performance, but the Kingston SSDNow V-Series held its own with a “budget” price tag of $US249. Hit up Laptop Mag for the full breakdown. [LaptopMag]

The Crucial SSDs are available in the current standard of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities at price points of $US170, $US330 and $US600, respectively. Those prices may seem outlandish if you’ve never browsed SSDs before, but they’re actually pretty fair; Crucial is a respectable company and those prices are even a little below average prices at each capacity, regardless of the fact that they’re among the fastest on the market. If you’re looking to pump some speed into your netbook, and you’ve got enough money to do something silly like spend twice the price of your computer on one component, they’re probably worth a look. [Press Release, Crucial Store]

They’re not the absolute fastest drives we’ve ever seen, but are definitely right up there at the top. WD’s new line, for example, isn’t even close to half that speed (100/80MB/s). You can expect them to be expensive, but we don’t know exactly how much they’ll cost, or when we can expect to see them in stores and laptops, but we’ll keep you updated. [Corsair via Crunchgear]

Design
Note: The R600 has been out for several months, we just tested their updated system with the mega SSD. So if you’ve read about the build before, you can skip down to our section on performance.

For $US3,500 (as tested with 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9400, 3GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Intel 4500MHD graphics, DVD burner, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi n), the Portege may be a bit of a disappointment right out of the box. Yes, it’s ridiculously light, starting at 2.46lbs, but that weight comes at a cost of feel. It’s plastic, and no amount of metal paint can get around that. But luckily the plastic is fairly smudge-proof and part of a “shock absorbing design” complete with “spill resistant” keyboard. In other words, the system may be more durable than a Macbook, especially with so few moving parts.

The 12.1-inch screen is technically WXGA (widescreen) resolution, though something about the system’s shape makes it look more vertical, like a 4:3 screen of yore. This is a minor point, of course, and its non-glossy screen gets just bright enough to use indoors by a window. In full-out sunlight, you can one-button switch the system into “transreflective” mode, essentially using the sun to brighten the screen. High brightness (in standard mode) is still the brightest setting, even under direct sunlight, but the transreflective setting probably uses a lot less power.
Extras, from the effective fingerprint scanner to the eSATA and SD ports, do a lot to sweeten the deal on the small, utilitarian system. And in this era, it’s straight up shocking to see an optical bay pop out of a system that’s just .77 inches thick.

Performance
The R600 runs Vista very fluidly, especially given its stature. Firefox, Windows Media Player, HD content streamed from the web—none of it will leave you waiting. But given the system’s Intel 4500MHD GPU, don’t get any fantasies of gaming.

Many will expect the computer to boot nearly instantly given the SSD—I’ve heard this expectation a number of times—but the still takes about a minute to fully load. The bottleneck here is simply not the hard drive.
How does the R600 compare to other light systems like the Macbook Air or Lenovo X301? Just as you’d expect from the specs on paper, it’s faster than the X301 and slower than the Air. That is…until you check out the SSD.
Fast! This isn’t some bargain basement drive that Toshiba shoved in a laptop for bragging rights. I mean, a 512GB SSD is clearly for bragging rights, but it’s Toshiba’s biggest and fastest drive made in-house—way nicer than we see competition from Lenovo and Apple (which we believe to both use earlier gen, Samsung drives).

But what does this speed chart mean in real life? Copying a 700MB file on my Macbook Pro (with a 320GB, 7200 RPM hard drive) took 35 seconds. On the R600, that same copy may have legitimately cracked the 8 second barrier. I’d like to say that I never took the speed for granted, but I totally started taking the speed for granted. Superman doesn’t bow down and thank the sun every time he avoids traffic by flying over Metropolis, so why should I be any different?

Toshiba’s 6-cell battery is rated internally at 7 hours, 32 minutes. I found that it offers 3 hours and 35 minutes of MPEG4 playback (screen maxed bright, Wi-Fi on, Bluetooth off, performance settings normal). Our test is rigorous, and it’s pretty common for laptops to only get about 50% of their rated battery life in our real world use simulation. Of course, the computer could probably eek out another 30 minutes to an hour with less taxing processes and a dimmer screen.

I Might Buy One…In 2011
The key to remember, of course, is that the 128GB R500 ran $US3,000 just a year ago. Now, their 512GB R600 is $US3,500. Even with the price bump on their top tier system, Toshiba has the right idea here: Push the envelope and force the market to adapt. Keep topping the sundae with cherries and someone will be hungry enough to buy it (meanwhile those of us who aren’t will have plenty of dropped cherries to munch on).
Still, I don’t know that I’d recommend this fully stuffed R600 with full gusto. It’s simply not as beautiful as premium, small-form laptops like the Dell Adamo or Apple’s Macbook Air (side by side above), and the prices of flash storage will certainly come down (and quickly at that). But I’m glad Toshiba made the thing because, frankly, somebody needed to load a laptop with a legitimately beastly SSD first.

The Huge SSD Is Fast
Under 3lbs, Less than an Inch Thick
Substantial ports and extras
For $US3,500, It Feels a Bit Like a Pontiac

[Additional benchmarks from