Other World Computing (OWC), a leading provider of products and services for the Macintosh marketplace, has introduced two new CD-RW external FireWire drives that operate at 52x speeds and allow users to burn CDs in less than 90 seconds. "These new 52-speed CD-RW solutions are further proof of our commitment at Other World Computing to continually bring the best and fastest solutions to market with exceptional value in mind," said Larry O'Connor, president of OWC. "We continue to try and push the technological envelope. We introduced our first 48-speed CD-RWs in November -- the Mercury Pro 48x12x48 -- and enhanced them in December by pushing the capabilities to 48x24x48. Now we've brought our first two 52-speed CD-RW drives to market. As with all of our Mercury Pro solutions, the Mercury Pro 52x24x52X CD-RW FireWire external solutions offer true `plug & play' technology and make CD creation easier than ever."

The new 52x-speed Mercury Pro drives are compatible with both Macintosh and Windows-based systems with FireWire or USB support, and feature Lite-On SMART-BURN technology. Each drive ships with 25 pieces of CD-R media, one piece of CD-RW media, Roxio Toast Lite 5.2.x and all connecting cables.

The Mercury Pro 52X CD-RWs write to industry standard 550MB (63 min.), 650MB (74 min.) and 700MB (80 min.) discs, respectively, and are capable of over-burn writes of up to 99 minutes. This functionality gives users the ability to manage large back-up jobs, archive data, make music CDs that are playable in any standard CD player, or create, edit and rewrite a variety of data formats to the discs many times over.

The Mercury Pro 52X CD-RW FireWire external solution is available today for $159.99 (USD). The FireWire/USB 2.0/1.1 version of the Mercury Pro 52X CD-RW solution is available for $179.99. The Mercury Pro 48x24x48 CD-RW FireWire external solutions are also available at prices starting at $139.99. All three CD-RW solutions are available exclusively through OWC at www.macsales.com.