m500

Crave giveaway: Crucial SSD, plus System Mechanic PC tune-up software

Congrats to Enrique G. of Tracy, Calif., for winning a pair of Sennheiser Momentum headphones in last week's giveaway. This week, we're got a twofer -- hardware and software.

First off, the winner gets a 120GB Crucial M500 solid-state drive with a three-year limited warranty. Like most new SSDs, the Crucial M500 supports the SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard and has a standard 2.5-inch design with 7mm thickness. This means it can fit in all standard laptops and desktops, as well as some ultrabooks. If your computer is running on a hard drive, replacing it with an SSD will be a big upgrade in terms of performance.

Once you've revved up your machine with your new drive, you can make sure it runs like new longer with the other half of this week's prize -- a copy of Iolo's System Mechanic, a highly rated PC tune-up suite designed to fix and clean up your machine. You'll be getting version 11.5, which works with all versions of Windows. … Read more

Crucial M500 brings SSD pricing to a new low

The dream of a solid-state drive that offers near 1TB of storage space without breaking the bank has just come true.

Crucial today announced the availability of the M500 SSD, its first terabyte-class drive, which comes in 120GB, 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB capacities and costs $129.99, $219.99, $399.99, and $599.99, respectively.

This is the first SSD on the market to offer close to 1TB at a cost close to that of most existing 480GB to 512GB SSDs.

According to Crucial, the M500 uses Micron's 20nm MLC NAND flash and Micron's custom firmware to deliver … Read more

Toshiba Satellites descend in five different updates

Simultaneously expanding and reducing the cost across its lineup, Toshiba's Satellite midrange notebooks got an across-the-board update today. It's a few more product numbers than most consumers can comprehend, but bear with us while we give you the rundown.

The Satellite L series, Toshiba's student-targeted budget line of laptops, comes in three flavors, all with 16x9 TruBrite LED-backlit displays and a large variety of configurations (AMD Turion, Intel Pentium or Core 2 Duo processors, optional ATI Radeon 3100 graphics, hard drives starting at 250 GB, RAM from 1 to 4 GB).

The Satellite L500/505 (starting at $… Read more

Cellwatch is finally ready for debut

Well, that was a disappointment. Last year we were intrigued by concept photos of a next-generation watch phone from SMS Technology that looked like an iPhone strapped to a wrist. But now the "Cellwatch M500" is scheduled to launch in March, and it looks pretty much like so many other other watch phones that seem to come out every other month.

The Australian-made M500, however, may be one of the few models that doesn't come from a generic Chinese company, which will undoubtedly give it more credibility among potential consumers. At the same time, its price--about $900--is … Read more

If the iPhone morphed into a watch

If anything can be said of the people at SMS Technology, it's that they don't waste any time. Only two months after the appearance of their "world's smallest phone"--a Dick Tracy-style watch communicator--the Australian company has already filed for a next-generation version that some say looks like an iPhone for the wrist.

Gadgetell reports that plans for the "M500," as it's called, have been filed with the FCC and that it includes "all your basic phone functions plus SMS texting, audio, video and Bluetooth." It also alsos feature a … Read more