Introduction

I thought that all hardware for Mac computers had some kind of special Mac tax, a VAT like mark up that encompasses all products that can be used with a Macintosh computer. It seems that ever since Apple chose to partner with Intel, Mac users have started to catch on to some of the powerful hardware that was developed on Planet PC. Now that the hardware lines have all but merged completely, nothing has been left off of the upgrade option list and the prices for the most common upgrades have plummeted.

Other World Computing (or OWC) is an Apple specialty store that also offers their own branded products. The company showed up on our radar when we first started seeing SandForce controlled SSDs entering the market. Even now only a small handful of the dozens of companies that are planning to offer SandForce SSDs have been able to bring them to market. OWC was immune to whatever problems other manufacturers are having and has a product on the market now, but that is only half of the story.

So far we've heard all kinds of stories about SandForce SF-1200 controlled SSD pricing, but to date most of the costs have been well over the launch price of OWC's Mercury Extreme Enterprise SSD. Who would have thought that one of the best SandForce values on the market would have come from a Mac specialty shop?

Today we are going to look at the pricing and performance of the OWC Mercury 100GB SandForce SF-1200 SSD. While we work our way through the benchmarks there will be a small sub article that takes a look at three different SF-1200 drives that all shipped to us with different firmware.

Let's check out the specifications and pricing first up.