We had heard talk about Samsung’s 256GB solid state drive back in May and it appears that today the talk has finally come true. Samsung has announced they are now officially manufacturing the large Flash-based drive, and we can tell you it’s fast. What we can’t tell you yet is how much it costs.

The speed of the 256GB drive is double that of Samsung’s 64GB and 128GB drives in what Samsung is calling “…disruptive performance”, with sequential read rates of 220MB/s and write rates of 200 MB/s. Applications can launch as much as 10 times faster than a 7200rpm notebook HDD with speeds that would be similar to a 15,000rpm drive.

Sony is offering this James Bond 007 Sony Vaio TT Series Notebook with carbon fiber black casing that also sports a 007 engraved logo and a leather case. The TT series features an 11.1″ widescreen LCD display, 2GB RAM, a 64GB Solid State Drive, HDMI out, and comes with a pair of noise canceling headphones. If you don’t want to dish out the $2,399 you can always get the Limited Edition 007 8GB Micro Vault Click USB Flash Drive for $29,99.

It allows you to “Gather intelligence for your next mission with the limited edition 007 Quantum of Solace 8GB Micro Vault Click USB flash drive. Featuring a hidden USB connector, it’s easy to transfer and exchange data with colleagues and correspondents. The USM8GL/B also includes Virtual Expander to virtually store three times the information. In addition to the 007 Gun Logo on the side, this flash drive comes preloaded with a Quantum of Solace movie trailer, stills and behind-the-scenes footage.” OMG. This is exactly what you need to become the next James Bond.

Sony’s got a new heavyweight multimedia notebook it is throwing around Stateside for those seeking a desktop replacement model. It is called the VAIO AW series, and you’ll find it pricing with starting pricing of around $1,600 for standard or $2,000 for premium.

The Sony VAIO AW series comes in at a chunky eight pounds, sporting a 18.4-inch widescreen display and standard Blu-ray Disc drive. Select models will also be able to record, store and play back personal content on BD media. HDMI connectivity is offered as well for those seeking output to a larger HD display.

HP had a few new laptops to show off today, including its smallest and lightest notebook to date with a built-in optical drive. Featured were two HP laptops - one a tablet - and a Compaq.

The HP EliteBook 2530p and HP EliteBook 2730p are expected to be available by early September, pricing around $1,500 and $1,670 starting, respectively. The HP Compaq 2230s is currently available for around $1,000. You can get full details after the jump via HP’s press release.

Lenovo, which earlier this year debuted its quiet thin ThinkPad X300, is back with word of the next model in the X300 family. This time around it is the Lenovo ThinkPad X301, with pricing starting at around $2,600.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X301 offers what Lenovo says is, on average, nearly 20 percent better performance over the ThinkPad X300 notebook due to the latest DDR3 memory and the latest Intel Core 2 Duo ultra low volt processor. The X301 also offers choices of either 64 GB or new 128 GB solid state drive storage as well as support for both DisplayPort and VGA.

Micron is a big name in the flash memory and storage world. It announced a pair of new solid state drives (SSDs) today called the RealSSD P200 and the RealSSD C200. The two drives are aimed at distinctly different markets and use different technologies.

The RealSSD P200 has the performance, power, and reliability that are needed in the enterprise environment. The P200 uses Micron single-level cell NAND technology and uses a 2.5-inch form factor. Storage capacity for the P200 line ranges from 16GB to 128GB and the drives use the 3Gb/s SATA interface. Maximum read and write speed for the P200 line is 250MB/s. The P200 SSDs are good for up to 2 million hours mean time between failure.

Wicked Lasers recently gave us the opportunity to check out one of their popular laser pointers, which gave us quite a surprise. Actually, before we received it we called it a laser pointer but not any more. Wicked Lasers assured us that it is not a laser pointer - it truly is a wicked laser, and we can’t disagree.

The sample product we received was from the Elite Series of green lasers, specifically the Elite 125. This laser appears to be around the middle of the road for the different lasers offered by Wicked Lasers. The average output power according to the company runs from 125mW to 149mW. They also have lasers in their catalog with as little as 50mW and as much as 300mW. The Elite 125 for us had plenty of power and made it very clear why this is not a laser pointer for regular presentations. For starters it would be difficult to see anything on a presentation screen because the light from the laser is way too bright, even from across a large room. Also, the crowd would be so distracted by what you’re using to point with they’d never pay attention to anything else you’re trying to show them.

The initial buzz of the new Intel Centrino 2 chip technology now seems to have died down as related laptops settle into regular purchasing habits. Two last laptops we thought we’d highlight from the flurry of announcements the other week are the Toshiba Tecra M10 and A10. The former has a starting price around $1,400, while the other model has yet to be priced.

These two updated flagship business laptops from Toshiba will include, besides the Centrino 2, other features such as hard drive protection, spill resistant keyboard, fingerprint reader and an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port. You can even have Toshiba throw in a solid state drive if you have a little bit of extra cash to pony up for this option.

Another one of Sony’s recent VAIO laptop releases looks to be a lightweight by coming in with a body weight of just over three pounds. It is called the Sony VAIO Z Series and you’ll find pricing for models in this series ranging from around $1,800 to $2,300.

The Sony VAIO Z Series sports the new Intel Centrino 2 technology as well as a 13.1-inch display. Select models have a high-end resolution of 1600 x 900. The casing of these notebook computers is a carbon-fiber, which Sony says will be useful in protecting your VAIO Z from common bumps and knocks.

Solid State Drives may well be the future of data storage in the computer industry, but with the high price of flash memory at this time SSDs are not seeing much adaption in the consumer market. So poor is the uptake by consumers for SSDs that Seagate will not even target the consumer market with its SSD line launching in 2009.

Somehow OCZ has got around the cost issue normally associated with SSDs with its latest offering called the Core Series SATA II Solid State Drive. OCZ says that the Core series are the first truly affordable SSDs and that the retail price of 50% less than competing products on the market.

Panasonic is rolling out a new rugged UMPC which is the first to integrate Intel’s Atom low power processor. It is called the Panasonic Toughbook CF-U1 and you’ll find it pricing around $2,500.

The Panasonic Toughbook CF-U1 is, like other PCs of its type, designed to be used in the field under a variety of harsh conditions. It sports the aforementioned Intel Atom processor, Windows Vista, a 5.6-inch WSVGA sunlight viewable touchscreen and a 16GB solid state removable drive which can be upgraded to 32GB.

Toshiba said with pride today it is launching the world’s first laptop with a 128GB solid state drive. It is called the Toshiba Portégé R500-S5007V and you’ll find it pricing around $3,000.

The Toshiba Portégé R500-S5007V, besides sporting a 128GB solid state drive, also comes equipped with a DVD SuperMulti drive. These two small form factor build-ins allow this laptop to be 0.77-inches thin and around 2.4 pounds. The R500-s5007V’s screen is a 12.1-inch backlit widescreen with transreflective LED.

Samsung has announced the world’s fastest MLC-based 256GB SATA solid state drive which boasts some amazingly fast read speeds of 200 mps and 160 mps write speeds. It’s also the thinnest and largest capacity drive with a SATA II interface. Salivating yet?

It measures just 9.5mm thick. No pricing info is available yet, but expect it to be expensive. Should you be able to afford one, they’ll be available this September, with a 1.8-inch version coming in Q4.

3K Computers has announced a new laptop computer the company considers to fit in the UMPC mold. It is priced starting at around $400 and is known as the Longitude 400 Mini Notebook UMPC.

The 3K Longitude 400 weighs under two pounds and sports a seven-inch display. It runs off of a 400 MHz 32-bit single core mobile processor, 512 MB of DDR2 RAM and a 4GB solid state drive for file storage. The operating system is Linux based as well.

Dr. Stuart Parkin and colleagues at IBM have recently published a paper in Science introducing a new type of storage technology dubbed ‘racetrack memory’.

The memory uses something called spintronics which uses the storage of bits generated by the magnetic spin of electrons rather than their charge to identify each as “on” or “off”. This new storage solution offers some advantages over the most popular current options. It’s faster than traditional hard disk drives and has a lower failure rate since there are no moving parts.