Samsung brings out new longer-lived 1TB Flash podule for PCs, notebooks

What i see is that the Samsung Magician software allows you to run the ssd in 'rapid mode'; http://techreport.com/review/25282/a-closer-look-at-rapid-dram-caching-on-the-samsung-840-evo-ssd

Looks like it's a form of ram disk, allowing the software to combine smaller write actions into bigger ones. Downside is that it's a ram disk...

The other stuff that the tool does is nothing spectacular: run a TRIM, run a benchmark, and switch between sets of OS Optimizations. These optimizations are nothing specials, just standard OS things like 'enable hibernation (for quick startup time)', Enable / Disable Search Service, etc.

When using this SSD on non-Windows platforms, i would expect it to work just the same as when running on a Windows platform without RAPID mode enabled.

EDIT: can't speak to the encryption stuff - but since there's no sticker on the box saying 'encryption for windows only' - i'm assuming this is functionality supported on other OSes.

EDIT2: but, digging a little bit deeper - three modes: bios password (assuming on the drive); TGC Opal - assuming you need this software / layer installed, then the drive is compatible with that protocol, and 'encrypted drive' has the tooltip 'Encrypted Drive feature provided by BitLocker® Drive Encryption in Windows® 8 and Windows Server® 2012.'

>It has a SATA-III interface, but it's not clear what their software (for Windows only) does.

>Anything else, and is this software required to get good performance out of their SSDs?

Marketing BS, mate.

840 on Mac

I'm running the EVO 840 in my late 2009 iMAC with Adapter Bracket. It runs extremely fast, all random and sequential Task like MP3/Video Encoding, very large Photoshop Files editing and multiple VMs at once. Booting into Yosemite from Poweron takes ~ 10 seconds for a working desktop! So I don't see an advantage for Windows here.