Fastmac Announces 2X Blu-ray Drives

Fastmac announced on Friday the first 2X low-profile, slot loading Blu-ray drives for some Apple notebooks, iMac and Mac mini.

The drives are also available for Apple PowerBooks and iBooks. The new drives cut burn times in half and provide up to 50 GB of storage on a single disc. The drives are backwards compatible with DVD and CD formats.

"Fastmacis new Blu-ray slot loading drive gives photographers, videographers & musicians the ability to save anything, anywhere- now twice as fast. System and database administrators can archive and retrieve large amounts of data on 1 convenient disk. And consumers can now watch todayis latest HD content [their own, not Blu-ray movies] in true high definition with surround sound anytime & anywhere they happen to be. Blu-ray is the next generation of storage technology & entertainment and itis available today, only from Fastmac," said Fastmacis Michael Lowdermilk.

Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later is required. The drives are compatible with the following Apple computers:

• iBook G4
• iMac G5
• iMac Intel
• MacBook Pro (17-inch)
• Mac mini
• PowerBook G3 Pismo
• PowerBook G4 Titanium (667 MHz or higher)
• PowerBook G4 Aluminum

Fastmac noted that: "Blu-ray burning requires 3rd-party software such as Adobe Premiere CS3 or Roxiois Toast 8 Titanium, which enables Blu-ray disk support in the Mac OS Finder. Native support for Blu-ray burning within iLife & iTunes is expected in the future via Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but cannot be guaranteed at this time."

The drives are expected to ship within 30 days, have a 1-year warranty, a 30-day money back guarantee, and are priced at US$999.95.