Fastmac today announced the first & only Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade for Apple's PowerBook, iBook & MacBook Pro computers. The new slimline, slot loading drive uses one of the fastest & most compatible Blu-ray mechanisms to provide up to 50 Gb of storage on 1 disk, without sacrificing compatibility with standard DVD & CD recordable media. Fastmac's Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade is scheduled to ship within 10 days and is available for pre-order from www.fastmac.com for a special introductory price of $799.95. Each drive carries a 1 year warranty and a 30 day money back guarantee .

Fastmac's slimline Blu-ray slot loading optical drive supports reading, writing and re-writing to single and dual layer Blu-ray media at 1x speeds. The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 8x speed in single layer and 2x speed in dual/ double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 4x speeds. The drive also supports DVD-RAM reading and writing at up to 5x speeds and standard CD-R and CD-RW burning at 8x speeds.

Compatibility
Fastmac's slimline Blu-ray slot loading optical drive upgrade requires Mac OS X 10.2.8 or higher and is compatible with the following Apple computers:

• iBook G4
• iMac G5
• iMac Intel
• MacBook Pro (17-inch)
• Mac mini
• PowerBook G3 Pismo
• PowerBook G4 Titanium (667 Mhz or higher)
• PowerBook G4 Aluminum

Blu-ray burning requires 3rd-party software such as Roxio's Toast 8 Titanium, which enables Blu-ray disk support in the Mac OS Finder, and Blu-ray media (sold separately). Native support for Blu-ray burning within iLife & iTunes is expected in the future via Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but cannot be guaranteed at this time.