If you're dreaming of a white Christmas, there's still several months to go and you'll need to be a snow-bearing region of the northern hemisphere, but if you're dreaming of an SSD, Lexar is here to help.

Sure, all of its competitors are too, with Intel most recently having released a swag of updated SSDs, but with the solid state of SSD technologies solidifying into an ever more affordable, faster and more robust alternative to old fashioned magnetic hard drive technologies, it may soon be 'crucial' for you to add one to your computer.

So, fanciful wordplay aside, what exactly has Crucial offered, and crucially, is it going to be popular with the public?

Well, to start with, the new Crucial m4 SSD is not just some brand new product, but is the successor to Crucial's previous 'award-winning' RealSSD C300 brand.

Aimed at both businesses and general consumers, the m4 SSD uses Micron Tech's 'industry-leading' 25nm NAND flash design technologies and innovations, no doubt helping to bring Crucial's claim of higher capacities and faster performance to life.

Available in sizes of 64GB to 512GB, and supporting the SATA 6Gb/s interface, which 'opens up the data path between the host processor and the SSD, and resulting in improved overall system responsiveness, including faster boot times and application loads.'

In comparison to the older C300 model, the m4 is 17% faster, reaching read speeds of 'up to 415MB/second'.

Write reads have also been boosted by 20%, with 'demonstrated increases up to 260MB/s' over the C300.

So, what about pricing, warranty and availability?

Please read on to page two!

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Although you'd imaging other SSD makers would make similar claims, Crucial says its SSDs are thus beneficial for 'notebooks, desktops, workstations, and industrial applications', where additional benefits include 'low power consumption, lightweight construction, and resistance to shock and vibration.'

Robert Wheadon, who appears to be Crucial's worldwide senior product manager for SSDs solidly stated that: 'The new Crucial m4 SSD builds on the enormous success of its predecessor, the Crucial RealSSD C300. As a subsidiary of Micron Technology, we're in the unique position of leveraging Micron's NAND development and manufacturing expertise for our Crucial branded SSDs. These next-generation m4 SSDs offer customers higher capacities and even greater performance at affordable prices.'

So, what is the pricing and availability? Well, we're only offered US prices, but seeing as the Aussie dollar is thwacking the US dollar out of the ballpark, US prices are great, because you'd imagine it means cheaper pricing here down under, as Crucial's press release says 'local pricing will be calculated at time of purchase'. 

Stating that its products are 'competitively priced', Crucial says its 64GB SSD sells for US $129.99, the 128GB SSD is $249.99, the 256GB SSD is $499.99 and the 512GB SSD goes for US $999.99.

Available 'now' from Crucial's website, and Cellnet Group Limited in Australia, Crucial's SSD has a 'three year warranty' to give your mind a solid state of peace.

So, if you've been wanting to add some solidity to your data and some speed to your everyday computing experience, an SSD may well be in your future, with your current hard drive potentially your last, if not one of the very last you'll own!