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OWC Announces Mercury Accelsior as Industry’s First Fully Macintosh and PC Supported Bootable PCIe SSD Card

Monday, April 16th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing today introduced the OWC Mercury Accelsior, the industry’s first both Mac-bootable and PC-bootable, fully supported PCIe SSD card. By utilizing the fastest data interface available in a Mac Pro or PC—the PCIe slot—the Mercury Accelsior offers nearly 3x the performance vs. an SSD in a SATA 2.0 3Gb/s drive bay with well beyond even 6Gb/s speeds of up to 780MB/s. Now owners of PCs and Apple Mac Pros can stop waiting for I/O-intensive apps like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, or Avid Pro Tools to render, capture or process; and can experience near instantaneous booting and application launches. The Mercury Accelsior will be highlighted along with other OWC storage solutions in booth #SL14110 during the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show being held this week in Las Vegas.

Fully Bootable, No Drivers Needed

The OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD card is AHCI compliant, so no drivers are required for a truly Plug and Play solution. Besides turning a computer into a speed demon, this high-performance SSD is bootable on PCs and is the only Mac-bootable, Mac supported PCIe SSD available. Article Continues…

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Category: New @ OWC, Press Releases
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Adding an OWC SSD to your 27″ iMac (2011) costs even less!

Thursday, April 12th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

To celebrate Tuesday’s release of the OWC DIY Kit for 2011 27” iMac models, we’re knocking and additional $15 off the price if you buy a qualifying OWC Mercury SSD at the same time.

Though the procedure is not for the faint of heart, adding a fast OWC SSD alongside the internal platter-based hard drive that’s already installed allows you to keep your data while gaining the speed benefits of an SSD when your OS is properly installed on it.

If you’re looking for further drive expansion options, though, or if you’d rather have a trained professional do it for you, you may want to check out our Turnkey Upgrade Installation Program, which has a number of extra options.

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Category: New @ OWC, Product Spotlight
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OWC Introduces DIY Kit to Add SSD to 2011 27″ Apple iMac

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed


Other World Computing today introduced the OWC DIY Kit for 2011 27″ iMac models. The kit enables owners to add a high-performance SSD in addition to existing factory hard drive. After performing this installation, which comes fully supported with a step-by-step video, iMac owners will enjoy near instantaneous booting and application launches along with data transfer rates up to 559MB/s. While OWC highly recommends its Mercury SSDs for the Apple iMac, this kit is fully compatible with all 2.5″ Serial ATA SSDs.

OWC DIY Kit for 2011 27″ iMac Includes:

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Category: Press Releases
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Spring Forward for March’s Garage Sale

Monday, March 12th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

We may have “lost” an hour of sleep over the weekend while jumping into Daylight Saving Time, but you won’t be losing any sleep over the great deals you can get in this month’s Garage Sale!

As always, we’ve got a wide range of products that we’re clearing out and there’s a good chance that we’ve got just what you’re looking for. Here’s just a sample of this month’s offerings.

As always, you need to act fast – items are “first come, first served” and of varying limited quantities. Quantities are limited to that which is on hand and items automatically count down and ‘disappear’ as sold out. Sorry… no rain checks.

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Category: Special OWC Deals
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OWC Lowers Prices, Adds Higher Performance Drive And Storage Capacity Options To Turnkey Upgrade Service For 2010-2011 Apple iMacs

Friday, March 2nd, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing announced today it has lowered prices and added new drive performance and capacity options to its OWC Turnkey Upgrade Installation Program for the 2010 27″ Apple iMac and 2011 21.5″ or 27″ iMac models. Starting from less than half the cost of factory SSD options, iMac owners can have OWC professionally install up to three award-winning OWC Mercury Solid State Drives up to 480GB each and with data rates over 2x faster than factory SSD options. Program options also include a larger capacity hard drive up to 4.0TB and certified Memory Upgrades up to 32GB. 27″ iMac owners also have the option of OWC installing the industry’s only eSATA interface and experience data transfer rates up to 600MB/s. OWC’s installation service program offers multiple configuration options starting at $169 with a 48 business hours or less installation turnaround. Article Continues…

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Category: Press Releases
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The Other World – Episode 44

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012 | Author: OWC Chris S.

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Category: The Other World
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Firmware Update Part II – The Results

Friday, February 24th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

In case you missed it, we released a new firmware update for our SSD line yesterday. At the same time, we’ve been running tests to determine if there was any impact on performance.

Well, there is a bit of an effect in that this latest revision seems to smooth out the performance of the drive, lessening the variance in write performance considerably.

It’s probably just easier to show you.

We tested a 240GB OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD using the DiskTester diglloyd Tools both before and after the firmware update, and got these results.

As you can see, read rates stay right around the same speed and variance, but take a look at how much less varied the write rates have become after the update. You’ll also notice that while the variance has narrowed, it has narrowed toward the faster range. Now the minimum speed is right around the level that used to be considered the middle-0f-the road for this drive; it’s now slightly faster.

Granted, this increase in speed isn’t likely to be perceptible to most users – you’d have to be writing files in the multi-gigabyte range just to see a couple of seconds shaved off. However, the stabilization of and increase of  write speeds may be an additional benefit if you choose to upgrade your firmware.

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Category: Benchmarking/Performance
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OWC Announces Firmware Update For Industry-Leading Mercury Solid State Drive (SSD) Line

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing announced today it has released a new firmware version—MP5.0.1—to deliver optimum performance and stability from its industry-leading, SandForce Driven Mercury Solid State Drive line when installed in the latest Macs and PCs. The GUI driven, Mac experience friendly and bootable updater for Solid State Drives is freely available from OWC for use exclusively with OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, Mercury Electra, and Mercury Aura Pro SSD models.

The Only Mac Friendly Update Experience

OWC’s proprietary firmware updater, now available with support for all of Apple’s latest Mac models, as well as nearly all prior machines, eliminates the need for a PC, ownership of Windows or other operating system, or the creation of a specially designated drive partition that many SSD updaters have required. Mac users only need to download the updater from OWC’s site, obtain and burn a DVD, and then boot from that DVD to launch an easy to use, point and click GUI for installing the latest firmware revision to their OWC Mercury SSD. OWC’s Mac-friendly firmware updater continues OWC’s unmatched firmware update support for Mac users of SandForce-based SSDs. OWC also provides update support for PCs running the Windows or Linux OS.

“We recognized SSDs would be an ever-evolving product, so we made it our priority to ensure users of OWC Mercury brand SSDs would immediately be able to utilize the benefit from any hardware and/or firmware updates,” said Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing. “As such, this latest firmware update is quick, easy and performed with no guesswork or doubt via the only point and click Mac-friendly updater; as well as standard upgrade packages for Windows and Linux Operating System users.”

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Category: Press Releases, Tech Tips
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