SSDs are much faster than traditional HDDs and allow users to boot their computers faster and access applications more quickly. The SSD is always being improved with prices going down and performance increasing.

A-DATA announced today what it claims to be the industry’s fastest SSD called the S596. The SSD is a 2.5-inch device with sequential read speeds of 250MB/sec and sequential write speeds of 180 MB/sec/ the drive also has a SDRAM cache for more performance.

For a long time upgrading your computer to an SSD was a very expensive proposition. Thankfully, the cost of SSDs has come down significantly in the last few months. Kingston just unveiled a new SSD boot drive upgrade package that sells for $84.99 after rebates.

Before those rebates the SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive kit sells for $115. The drive kit includes the 40GB SSD, drive cloning software, power, and data extension cables, and adapters to make the 2.5-inch drive fit a 3.5-inch bay.

PureSilicon has upgraded its Renegade R2 SSD series with a brand new 256GB version. The drive features 255MB/sec sequential read rates and 180MB/sec sequential write rates and supports MIL-STD-810F standards so that it can hold up in extreme temperatures and to shock and vibration.

The tough and rugged 256GB SSD drive will begin shipping in the first quarter of 2010 along with encrypted versions. The PureSilicon 256GB SSD Drive is also available in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB capacities.

Dane-Elec has just announced a new line of So SuperSpeed hard drives and SSDs which use the up and coming USB 3.0 standard. The drives can hit the amazing speed of 250MBps which is about ten times that of USB 2.0.

Capacities range from 500GB to 2TB for the hard drive. The SSDs come in 80GB and 160GB capacities. The So SuperSpeed drives will hit on December 11th, with the 500GB hard drive costing $180 while the SSDs will cost you $400 and $800 for the 80GB and 160GB capacities.

If your gadget isn’t up to your standards, just mod it and make it so. While searching for a replacement hard drive for his old school iRiver H300, Andrew decided to go with an SSD drive for more reliability. He couldn’t find the proper SSD drive to replace the H300s so instead he looked for a broken hard drive player to combine with an SSD drive.

So he found a broken Zune 120 and a refurbished SanDisk EIDE/PATA SSD drive and married them. Total cost was $130. If you want to do this yourself, Andrew has some instructions for you.

SSDs are slowly coming down in price to the point where the average computer fan can afford to buy one to use in their system. That said, they are still much more expensive than hard drives with tons more storage space. Super Talent added a new SSD to its line today called the UltraDrive DX that is a branded Toshiba product.

The SSD uses MLC NAND inside and has read speed of up to 230MB/sec and write speeds of up to 180MB/sec. The drives also have dual protection layers with encrypted password protection and data randomization technology to prevent blocks of data from being stolen.

Super Talent announced a crazy fast SSD that doesn’t use the SATA interface that most SSDs use. That old and tired SATA interface is just too slow for Super Talent’s needs, the RAIDDrive slips into a vacant PCIe slot on the mainboard.

The PCIe slot allows the RAIDDrive to support sequential read speeds of up to 1.4GB/sec and sequential write speeds of up to 1.2GB/sec. Inside the RAIDDRive are four separate SSDs that use the SATA interface and higher capacity RAIDDrives cram eight SSDs into the RAIDDrive SSD.

The SSD is a tough sell today. A few consumers buy them for their superior performance compared to a plain HDD. The higher levels of performance are offset for many consumers by the fact that the SSD costs so much more to purchase and has less storage space than most HDDs.

Samsung has decided to target the enthusiast gaming segment with its latest 256GB SSD. Samsung says that the fast performance is perfect for gaming. The higher performance for the SSD could mean faster load times for levels and better performance in game.

It seems like each week we have new SSDs hitting the market. That is a good thing, the more options we have for SSDs on the market, the lower the price tends to be. SSDS are still considerably more expensive than comparable hard drives today though.

Kingston has announced its latest SSD called the SSDNow V+. The SSD is designed for high performance with higher input and output operations per second and faster read and write speeds. The drive is a 2.5-inch form factor.

OCZ has announced more details about their 1TB Colossus SSD. First shown at Computex, the storage device now finally has a release date and pricing information. This new drive will hold a 3.5-inch drive bay and is capable of handling up to 250MB/s read and 200MB/s write speeds. All of this on a SATA II interface. A JMicron controller drives the RAID 0.

It will cost you a hefty $2,500 when the 1TB OCZ Colossus SSD is released by the middle of this month. A 512GB version should arrive soon however if the 1TB isn’t in your budget.

As NAND flash makers reduce the size of the build process they use a lot of good things happen. The products using the flash storage derived from the NAND products consumer less power, produce less heat, and can be mode for less money.

Intel has announced the industry’s first 34nm SSDs this week that reduce the price of the SSDs by up to 60% compared to the previous 50nm Intel SSDs. The new MLC X25-M SSD is intended for the laptop and desktop market and is available in 80GB and 160GB capacities.

We all know that eventually the SSD will replace the standard HDD in storage applications. The benefits of the SSD are many, not the least of which is the fact that the SSD is much faster than typical hard drives.

Crucial has announced a new line of SSDs called the M225 series that offers up blazing fast performance. The M225 series offers read speeds of 250MB/sec and write speeds of 200MB/sec. Inside the standard 2.5-inch drive housing Crucial uses MLC NAND flash.

The SSD has been on the market for a while now and the prices of SSDs are finally starting to come down. When they first became available, a small SSD could run into the $1000 range. Today you can get a nice SSD for about $300.

Samsung has announced a new SATA-interface SSD that can be used for either primary storage or as a complementary drive to boost performance. The SSD uses a mini-card form factor and is very rugged. The SSD measures 30mm x 51mm and is 3.75mm thick.

Dynamism must have a pretty good sense of humor. Made us laugh. They have a $799 price point on their upcoming Viliv S5 Premium MID. Your $799 will get you the entry-level 3G model with a 32GB SSD, Intel Atom Z520 1.33GHz processor, 1GB RAM, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, all powered by the amazing Windows XP.

If you want a 128GB SSD, you’ll need to add an additional $500, making the final cost a steep $1,299 compared to notebooks with equivalent pricing.

Looks like the Sony VAIO P is learning some new tricks. These new processor and drive upgrades will have the Tiny PC taring up benchmarks at twice the speed of the original. Most of that improved speed comes from the SSD drive, but the Atom Z550 sure doesn’t hurt.

Over in Japan they are getting a WiMAX version, which doesn’t mean crap to us since most of the US doesn’t have WiMax coverage. As usual, Japan is always beating us.