Didn't think you could run a portable version of Window 8, nevermind from a flash drive? Welcome to the future now. The DataTraveler Workspace not only allows Windows To Go, but the tech behind this little flash drive is very interesting; its USB 3.0 interface supports some blistering speeds because of the SSD SandForce controller onboard. Yes, the same controller found on desktop SSDs, except it's packed into a tiny form factor to put on your keyring here. Let's take a closer look.

As part of our ongoing efforts to connect with industry leaders in the tech world, we reached out to interview some of the premier manufacturers who might be able to educate us on various aspects of the industry. It is not every day you get an opportunity to visit a Premier Manufacturing Company like Transcend, a world class leader in the field of memory and consumer electronics. Along with my invitation I had the pleasure of touring their facility. After our tour, I sat down with the General Manager, Clarence Chan, and Marketing Director Leslie Garcia for an interview about Transcend. Before we jump into the Q & A, below is a bit of history about the company and its products, including a video.

The KingSpec Challenger E3000 is an Enterprise-targeted drive, with great random write performance. While KingSpec may not be well known to many of our readers, they are a company based in Shenzhen, China and only produce SSDs, nothing else. Strictly speaking, based on such a specific product lineup, KingSpec has an enormous capacity to produce a huge volume of drives for the market. Let's see how this Sandforce-based SSD performs.

The Transcend StoreJet 25A3 portable USB 3.0 drive. Sporting a speedy interface, disk management and encryption utilities, and a sleek form factor that can fit into your pocket, this StoreJet might be just the thing you need for big capacity on the go.

While the VisionTek Data Fusion drive is certainly suitable for home or office use, there's also opportunity to employ it in a mail server or other IT applications. The Data Fusion drive is bootable, and with claims of 800MB/s and 100,000 IOPS, such speed is typically expensive, but this PCI-E SSD currently retails for only $380 for the 240GB version. Sounds very tempting to us.

Another in the list of SandForce SSDs is the latest from OCZ, the Vertex 3.20. It's an interesting move because we've seen the Vertex 4 already from OCZ, so is this "new" drive a step backwards? Not really, according to OCZ. This drive shares the same features as its predecessor, showcasing the popular SandForce 2281 controller, but this latest version now comes with 20nm NAND flash memory.