Hasta La Gadget!

Intel said Monday that it will add a 160-Gbyte capacity to its line of solid state disk drives, both in the 2.5-inch X25-M form factor usually associated with notebooks, as well as the 1.8-inch X18-M form factor that netbooks and more portable devices use. The 2.5-inch version is shipping now, and the 1.8-inch version will begin shipping next month. Prices were not disclosed.

From my standpoint, what really hasn’t been made clear is what the minimum amount of storage a typical user will accept in a given notebook, and how close an SSD is to that point. As more and more users shift away from desktops into notebooks, the demand for storage should increase, making an SSD’s job of replacing a spinning drive more difficult.

But if users recognize that external storage can serve the same purpose, and if, as a consequence, users are satisifed with a smaller amount of fast, rugged local storage built into their laptops, then SSDs may end up taking a larger chunk out of the spinning disk-drive market, and even spur talk of replacing spinning drives in notebooks. A notebook market where SSDs are king, sitting alongside a desktop market based on an established rotating-drive industry – that would be intriguing.