Samsung XP941 512GB

Welcome to the wonderful world of M.2

To paraphrase Dr Evil, is it too much to ask for an M.2 drive with frickin’ laser beams, sorry NVMe support, attached to its head? No idea what we’re talking about? Let’s start at the beginning.

Solid-state drives were the final piece of the PC performance puzzle. Before they arrived, everything else was achieved with solid-state circuits. Central processing, system memory, graphics, the whole nine yards. But not mass storage of data.

No, that was still done using arcane magnetic platters rotating about a spindle and interrogated by read heads floating precariously above the platter surfaces. That made for slow going during certain tasks, most obviously collecting random bits of data from distant sections of the platters. It also makes conventional hard drives prone to failure due to the delicate moving components.

The Future of Solid-State Storage

It's taken a decade, but SSDs are finally delivering. by Jeremy Laird

Solid-state storage was once the final frontier. It's arrival would banish the last remaining mechanised throwback and deliver us into a brave new age of lagless, lightning-quick computing. Back in 2008, when the first affordable SSD rocked up, initial impressions were revelatory, but it quickly became clear solid-state storage wasn't quite the instant fix – it turned out to be the most complex component of all.

Whether it's different data types delivering differing performance, drive survival or performance longevity, the more we learn, the more we recognise the limitations of earlier drives and realise how much potential there is. Fast forward to 2015 and today's SSDs are out-of-sight better than those laggy, stuttery early-adopter drives. If you haven't already jumped to SSDs, we guarantee you'll be delighted when you do. It's now more affordable, too. Decently capacious drives with great performance can be had for under £100.

Ultimate Playstation Trivia Book. Vol. 10

We’ve gathered together over one thousand of the juiciest facts, figures and shocks from the world of playstation to educate your brain and tickle your funny bone. Topic 901-1001.

901. Battlefield 4 is banned in China due the story’s focus on a Chinese Admiral going to war against America.

902. Tetsuya Nomura designed some of the outfits in Final Fantasy X to test the artists’ abilities to recreate them in game. Lulu has multiple belts that are supposed to be arranged in a specific order.

903. The closing theme for ‘90s Nickelodeon program The Amanda Show is actually music from Spyro that was reused by composer and Police drummer Stewart Copeland.

Kalimba

With each level you complete in Kalimba, another face is added to the totem pole on the level select screen, raising a towering record of your progress. Your monument may be one of shame, crude logs declaring to the world how you’ve scraped through, or of glory, shimmering decorations and even gold-plated visages telegraphing your triumph.

Galak-Z: The Dimensional

17-Bit’s space shooter is all the better for going rogue

When we previously tuned in to Galak-Z, 17-Bit CEO and creative director Jake Kazdal described his retro-themed space shooter as the modern antidote to endless twin-stick blasting and a thousand circles of bullet hell. Not that you’d know it just by looking. With its cel-shading, pause screen drenched in VHS stutter and CRT fringing, teleplay credits before every mission, and asteroids that break into chunks at the merest brush of a hot-pink laser bolt, Galak-Z continues to lean heavily on the visual language of ’80s Saturday morning anime and ’70s arcade cabs. After over a year spent retrofitting Roguelike elements into the game, nothing about Kazdal’s early mission statement has changed either, yet everything is subtly different.