“With our Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter, users can now extend the capabilities of their Thunderbolt Technology-equipped Macs like never before. With a single Thunderbolt adapter, they can instantly add connectivity to their computers, whether increasing the number of ports, incorporating new interfaces, or adding peripheral devices that otherwise could not connect through a Thunderbolt port,” said Robert Farnsworth, CEO of Sonnet Technologies. “By hot-plugging and swapping ExpressCard/34 cards, users have unprecedented flexibility to change interfaces and devices when needed.”

“With our Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter, users can now extend the capabilities of their Thunderbolt Technology-equipped Macs like never before.”

The new ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter supports most PCI Express^®-based Sonnet professional ExpressCard/34 adapters and specialty adapters from other manufacturers. Supported cards range from CompactFlash™ and SDXC™ UHS-I card readers to FireWire^® 800 and eSATA adapters. The new Thunderbolt adapter also supports ExpressCard adapters supplied with specialty devices such as the AJA^® io Express. Sonnet expects other manufacturers’ ExpressCard/34 products to become compatible as their drivers are updated to be Thunderbolt technology-aware.

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IT Enquirer Review

Since announcing this product, Sonnet has received many inquiries about this product’s compatibility with SxS^™ memory cards, because they are designed to interface with an ExpressCard/34 slot. Based on testing in Sonnet’s lab, it is expected that the Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter will be fully compatible with, and transfer data at full speed from SxS memory cards once Sony makes available an updated driver that is Thunderbolt technology-aware.Developed by Intel^® and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple, Thunderbolt technology supports high-performance data services and high-resolution displays through a single compact port. The Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter supports PCI Express 1.1 technology with 2.5 Gbps throughput in both directions. The Sonnet adapter connects directly to a computer or at the end of a Thunderbolt device chain with a Thunderbolt cable (available at the Apple Store^®).

The Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter (part number ECHO-E34) is compatible with all Apple computers running Mac OS^® X and equipped with Thunderbolt ports. View the complete product info and specs here.

Scalable Design for Critical Applications

The 6Gbps SAS expander technology is created to cope with the expanding need for faster data transfer rates. It caters for the demands of  applications in the digital content creation and IT industry fields such as data centers, databases, nearline storage, disk-to-disk backup, image acquisition, and shared SAN networks. With the built-in server-grade 650 watts 2+1 redundant PSU, the enclosure can run 24×7 for mission critical applications.

Complete, Easy-to-Use Storage Management

The SAS expander enclosure NS385S-8026 supports high-speed, consistent, cost-effective, and easy-to-use features. Users/administrators can monitor the status of enclosure’s fans, PSUs, and HDDs with SAS RAID HBA. The storage features failure alerts for fan, PSU, and HDD with mute button/function from enclosure and LCD. Users are able to choose on their own the favorite SAS RAID HBA for NS385S-8026. Through the SES-2 protocols and SGPIO, the SAS RAID HBA can access the enclosure system and HDDs for information.

Features

• Robust 4U 24-Bay Rackmount Chassis
• Backplane design for Twenty-four (24) 3.5″ SAS/SATA 6G/3Gbps Drives
• Built-in 6Gbps SAS Expander for single miniSAS(SFF8088) cable connectivity
• Supports Two (2) miniSAS connectors for next storage expansion
• LCD control panel for setup, alarm mute and configuration
• Individual Key lock of each HDD tray for physical security
• LED indicators for HDD power, activity and failure on each removable tray

Thunderbolt™ Optimized Drivers

Until now there has not been a way to use ATTO PCIe based host adapters with notebooks or machines that don’t have a way of connecting PCIe cards. Now, with the beta release of brand new drivers, ATTO host adapters can be used with Thunderbolt-enabled laptops, desktops and all-in-ones such as Apple Mac® systems with support for Thunderbolt hot-plug and DisplayPort functionality. How? Simply use a PCIe expansion chassis (like Sonnet’s Echo Express) which can be plugged into the Thunderbolt port on your system and provide a number of PCIe slots to plug in cards like ATTO Celerity or ExpressSAS host bus adapters or FastFrame network interface cards. Click here to download the product brief.

ATTOView™ Embedded Interface

ATTO shared Storage Controllers have boasted leading performance and stream counts in video applications for almost 7 years. With the introduction of Thunderbolt, professional content creation applications will benefit from solutions containing ATTO Thunderbolt-enabled storage controllers with the ATTOView Interface.

The ATTOView graphical user interface (right) provides easy to use monitoring and management for Thunderbolt-enabled storage controller products. ATTOView provides basic status and management tools for prosumer and professional class storage products powered by ATTO.

• In-band access, no separate software needed
• Controller and enclosure temperature monitoring
• Drive and enclosure status reporting
• RAID level management
• Firmware updating
• OEM Customizable look and feel

Only ATTO Thunderbolt Storage Controllers include and support the ATTOView user interface. Many similar storage products lack basic management and reporting. ATTO has developed the ATTOView interface to give users a clean, simple and easy to use interface that won’t get in the way of accessing their storage while providing the functionality needed to monitor and manage their Thunderbolt-attached storage devices. Click here to download the product brief.

Please contact your sales rep about the availability of these ATTO products.

Patriot’s media players offer all the convenience of accessing movies, music or photos on your large HDTV without the hassle of transferring or rewiring from your PC. The Patriot Memory PBO Alpine is the perfect choice for those looking for ultimate flexibility and functionality in a media player solution. Powered by an ARM926 processor and Android OS, the PBO Alpine will support full 1080p playback and will offer a wide range of connectivity options including HDMI, Component, and optical audio out.

Providing out of the box entertainment, the Patriot Memory PBO Alpine will come preloaded with YouTube, iTV, iRadio, Picasa, and a fully functional web browser. For enthusiast buyers, the PBO Alpine will offer support for user developed Apps that can be side-loaded for custom functionality.

The PBO Alpine will deliver full support for M-JPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, VC-1, DivX, Xvid, RealVideo, VP6, .MKV and surround sound/stereo decoders for Dolby Digital Plus, and DTS 2.0. For easy connectivity to all your media files, the Patriot Memory PBO Alpine will include a wired connection and seamlessly integrate in to your home network.

The PBO (left) is now EOL and replaced with the PBO Alpine (right)

We’re yet to confirm when the sleek new PBO Alpine will be in stock, but expected shipping time is within the next month or two.

Unique Indilinx Features

The Octane series also includes advanced features unique to Indilinx, including latency reduction technology to enhance system responsiveness and enable instant-on boot-ups, and proprietary NDurance™ technology to increase the lifespan of the NAND flash memory and minimize performance degradation. In addition, Octane drives support AES and automatic encryption to secure critical data, bringing unique enterprise features within the reach of enthusiasts. Octane SSDs also deliver the energy efficiency, durability, and reliability that traditional hard drives cannot provide.

Click here to download the product spec sheet

Reviews

“Look at those access times! The read is the fastest we have ever achieved… This is a fantastic drive, and overall I would consider it one of the best we’ve seen to date.” Pure Overclock 17 Jan 2012 Read More

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Product Awards

From their beginnings as Fotocats in Pretoria in 1990, Gerack Electronics has grown from strength to strength as experts in the photographic and home entertainment fields.

Along with a new store in Bedfordview, which boasts with a complete photographic studio as well as an automated home theatre cinema, Gerack have long provided clients with most of their requirements. And, should they not have it in stock, they will order it from the local supplier or import it directly with full backup support.

Gerack Electronics is one of the few official South African stockists of all major camera brands including Nikon, Canon, Sony, Olympus and Panasonic as well as upmarket brands such as Leica, Swarovski and Zeiss. Their home entertainment department contains a plethora of high-end, specialised audio systems including Yamaha, Arcam, Marantz, Onkyo, Monitor Audio, Harmon Kardon and B&W to name a few. Their dedicated insurance replacement division has been servicing all major insurance companies including Alexander Forbes, Mutual & Federal and Santam for the past 15 years.

As photographic specialists, Gerack has carved more than a niche in the photography market: Not only with their expertise but also their extensive range of lenses, flashes and studio equipment. Their photographic knowledge base and hunger for all things technological has led to exciting expansion. Initially trading under Fotocats, where they built their our reputation, they recently expanded to their own business, Gerack Electronics. While the name has changed, management, as well as the ethos of integrity has not. What expansion has allowed, however, is for only the best in home entertainment solutions including Syntech’s Mede8er range, telescopes, binoculars, GPS devices, IT products, video cameras and accessories, night-vision equipment, as well as Apple products to be included in their product range. And because they are a founding member of the ISER buying group, they are able to procure all of this stock at the best prices.

Lastly, but most importantly, Gerack has always prided themselves on great service at every point in their interaction with clients. Beginning with knowledgeable and highly trained in-store staff all the way to their expert in-house installation team, they guarantee the best in support from every level of our organisation.

MOTHERBOARD: MSI Z68A-GD Military Class Mainboard

POWER SUPPLY: Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 1000W

GRAPHICS: Gainward Phantom3 GeForce GTX570 1280MB GDDR5

MEMORY: Patriot Sector 5 DDR3 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-10666 1333Mhz

PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7 2600 3.4GHz

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7 Professional 32 bit

STORAGE: Hard Drive Hitachi 1TB 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
READ 113MB/s WRITE 111MB/s

Solid State Drive Patriot Wildfire 120GB
READ 557MB/s WRITE 516MB/s

PCIE Solid State Drive OCZ RevoDrive 3X2 240GB
READ 1310MB/s WRITE 1247.6MB/s

USB Flash Drive Patriot Snip USB 2.0 8GB
READ 16MB/s WRITE 10MB/s

USB 3.0 Flash Drive Patriot Supersonic Xpress 16GB
READ 81MB/s WRITE 25MB/s

Anandtech

“When put to the test the Octane does not disappoint. It’s within a couple MB/s of the SF-2281 based Vertex 3, and effectively one of the fastest 6Gbps drives on the market today.”

“The Indilinx Everest is a surprisingly competent controller. Based on its performance in our Storage Bench tests, I’d say the OCZ Octane is easily able to hold its own against SandForce based drives. ”

Read the full review

Tweak Town

“OCZ Octane will be a turning point for SSDs. OCZ has delivered a product that forgoes high packaging costs and costly accessory add-ons. This is the starting line for bringing SSDs into mainstream and even upper entry level computers. This is the start of SSDs moving from luxury products to commodity products.”

Read the full review

PC Perspective

“Whoa. OCZ wasn’t kidding about that lower latency! I didn’t think anyone would ever unseat Intel on low latency / high IOPS at lower queue depths, but the proof is clearly in the pudding here. This is the key factor for how ‘snappy’ an SSD feels in use”

Read the full review

Hot Hardware

“The OCZ Octane 512GB drive we tested here performed very well throughout our entire battery of tests. Ultimately, the OCZ Octane was the fastest drive we tested in terms of boot speeds.”

Read the full review

The RevoDrive 3 X2 provides unique benefits to users by incorporating features from the VCA 2.0 flash virtualization software that allow certain direct memory access (DMA) and data management functions. Included in this feature-set are OCZ’s exclusive command queuing and queue balancing algorithms, which can be handled by the onboard processing core for higher performance and reduced burden on the host resources.

“OCZ had to do an amazing job of this device considering the price and they have certainly done that. The Revodrive 3 X2 not only beats the ACARD ANS-9010 but it totally demolishes it in a way we have never seen before.”

VCA 2.0 is also the only virtualization layer in the industry with TRIM and SCSI unmap support to enhance sustained performance and provide greater endurance by significantly reducing the overhead associated with garbage collection. Furthermore, VCA also offers consolidated SMART support and provides system administrators with advanced features for monitoring, analyzing, and reporting device attributes.

With an all-new architecture, the RevoDrive 3 X2 shatters its predecessor’s performance record and is faster than comparable solutions ten times the price. Eliminating the SATA bottleneck,the PCIe-based Revo3 X 2 delivers ground-breaking 1.5GB/s of bandwidth and 230,000 4KB random write IOPS making this an ideal SSD for high performance applications,multimedia,and workstations. Additionally, the Revo3 X2 offers up to an ample 960GB capacity for users in media development and management looking for more storage room.

Available in 240GB, 480GB and 960GB capacities, the OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 provides exceptional performance and reliability features for data warehousing, applications, multimedia files, and operating systems with the superior durability, and energy efficiency of SSDs. The Overclocker online magazine has done a brilliant review of the new RevoDrive, calling it ‘extremely good value for money’. Click here to read the article