Sony Japan announced at "Sony Dream World 2002" taken place in Yokohama, Japan a new external slim-line combo drive. It supports 24X writing, 10X re-writing, 24X reading, 8X DVD-ROM reading, PowerBurn (buffer underrun protection), USB1.1/2.0 interface connection, Memory stick slot reading and MP3 playback (either from CD-R media or Memory stick). The drive is powered from a re-chargeable Battery. It supposed to hit the Japanese market around November at a price of 40,000 Yen (330 US$).