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Mar 10

Solid State Drives: It’s a Matter of Affordable, not Size

This article was written on June 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

PQI 256GB SSD drive The end of mechanical drives might soon be in sight as computer manufacturers begin incorporating the solid state drives (SSD) into laptops. We’ve already seen it happen with Dell when they added a 32GB SSD for $450 to a few Latitude laptops. Since then hard drive manufacture’s, such as Samsung, have debuted larger drives going up to 64GB. Of course, there is always the unreasonable drives such as one PQI who announced a 256GB model that is made for laptops. At 8-times the size of the 32GB drive, this is sure to bust the bank.

As I’ve pointed out, the benefits of using a solid state drive outweigh the downfalls. Now it is a matter of which manufacturer will be able to produce the first "reasonably" priced SSD first. A 64GB drive would be the perfect size for my laptop, and I would say that I would go upwards of $200 to get such an upgrade. From the looks of it that is still a little ways away since PNY’s 32GB is available to OEM’s for $350, and that is only for companies looking to purchase a lot.

If you’re having a hard time waiting, you can always pickup a 32GB SSD, but it will cost ya. Dell sells it separately for $549, and it won’t ship for a few weeks. That may sound like a lot of money, but it sure beats the 8GB SSD that Newegg is selling for $180 (which is even out-of-stock).

Maybe soon we’ll see companies selling these solid state drives, and they’ll be giving away a free laptop with them.