Please, Please, Please, bring this on TODAY!! This will revolutionize laptops! Just bring out a 1.5inch version (or smaller)!

so purty.. i want!

lets put this in an iPod or something. that would be... interesting.

but an extremely thin laptop would also be perfect for this.

I can pcture the Fry's add:

Available in limited quantities. Order your today!
Just $5995.00 with free $399 Laptop (after rebate).

LOL.

My macbook is in need of a larger HDD....a 200+GB 2.5" SSD is exactly what the doctor ordered. Bring it...for the love of Jeff bring it!

They're going to be ridiculously pricey. Completely irrelevant for any normal enthusiast who isn't indepently wealthy.

Very cool, and I want solid state drives in all my devices - but I'm not holding my breath on these. No way will they be even in sniffing distance of affordable.

sniff sniff sniff...

NOTHIN'

The last pic is 32 GB 1,8" form factor disk (like in ipods or ultraportables), not a CF card.

I agree kaiser, i'm in the same boat.

oh skeet skeet

Customer: There's no pricetag. How much will this cost me?
Salesperson: After we complete your credit check, we have several lenders standing by ready to compete for your business.

Gimmie a mortal price and woohoo.

JosW - its more like..

Customer: There's no pricetag. How much will this cost me?
Salesperson: If you have to ask, then you don't need it, nor can you afford one. Begone!

(I'm no hardware engineer, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this...just be nice :) )

So...ummm...just searched for the keyword "SSD" on NewEgg:

8GB = $226 or $179
4GB = $126

Yet, you can get great Corsair USB Flash-drives for:

16GB = $125 (after rebate)
8GB = $70-$95 (after rebate)
4GB = $50 max.

These USB drives have 30MB/s read/write rates...and I would imagine that if you ran a few chips in parallel, you should be able to get the 60MB/s that these new SSD's are claiming. So, the cost of the flash shouldn't be any higher -- you just need better controller circuitry to manage it. So why are the SSD's so highly priced? It doesn't seem like the technology should be double the price/GB of a USB drive, since you should be able to use the same flash chips. Why are SSD's so pricey? Just because they're "new" and not as ubiquitous as USB drives yet? Why can't I get a 32GB SSD with a 40-50MB/s read/write speed, using 2 of the 16GB chips stripped out of a thumb drive, for $300? [2x the price of a 16GB thumb drive, plus $50 extra for the additional hardware/circuitry]

We all need the price for these things to come down massively so we can put them in our portable media players.

I'd like to see an iPod with something like this before my computer. While I know I would see a huge benefit if I had it in my PC, I think I'd appreciate the improved battery life and decreased seek times on my iPod more.

Alternatively, it would be nice if somebody went down the SSD road and made a PMP that I could work with as an alternative to the iPod. Daddy needs more storage!

How many erase cycles can this SSD tolerate?

Is there really any reason for these SSD to maintain HDD form factor? I understand that right now it makes sense to make it easier on laptop manufacturers. But aside from there, SSD could take on much more "pliable" shapes and sizes to better fit modern notebooks, right?

That would be great as an OS drive. At 60MB/s and no seek times, it would be perfect. I can see it easily outperforming a Raptor, with more storage space.

@EQC: SSD's last longer, much longer than flash drives. becuase windows/mac use virtual ram, and are constantly reading writting a normal 4-8gb compact flash or usb card would be dead in months at most.

you could turn off virtual ram but unless you have 8gb of ram in your notebook say goodbye to photoshop or any other app more intensive than firefox.

> Plus, the thing will probably last 10 years,
> certainly longer than you'll hold onto any laptop

I'm not sure about that. I bought my first laptop 8 years ago, and it's still serving me well as a movie player hooked up to my HDTV and general Linux server at the moment.

I think that's what's great about old laptops - they make great lowpower/lowcost server machines. :)

@ EQC

I can't say this for sure, but my best guess from an engineering standpoint is that its got a lot to do with memory addressing. For example if you put two flash chips in parallel, the memory locations in the chips are numbered the exact same, so calling one location would, by default, call the same location on both chips at the same time. If you use some sort of controller to use a bit that indicates which chip to use (0 for chip 'A' and 1 for chip 'B') it would really bog down that 30mps transfer rate. My unsure-ed-ness is stemming from the architecture. I am assuming the addressing is built into each chip. This is unlike hard disk drives where only data is stored on the platter and memory addressing is handled on a control board.

"dj-kenpo" has the right of it. I've read of people setting up Linux and Windows systems to use thumbdrives or even CF or SD cards for their system partition and/or swap file. They all seem to die whithin about a week (the flash media I mean) of normal operation...

The SSDs must be made to a higher spec...

thanks dj-kenpo, lightredfloyd, and OddManOut for your responses. I feel a bit smarter now.

this is wicked. harddrive manufacturese like maxter must be shitting their pants, 3 years from now most people will be switching to flash, and in 5 no one will have a need for platter based drives.

and about fucking time. loud, hot and slow. good riddence.

@dj-kenpo: Don't be naive. Hard disks are cheaper per gigabyte and should remain so for a long time. In a few years when these SSDs are affordable, you'll still probably be able to pick up a 4TB hard disk at Fry's for 1/10 the price.

I've been watching solid-state storage chasing disk drives for quite a long time (anyone remember TI's "bubble memory" from the late '70s?); it gets better and better but it's always a bit behind.

That thing's gonna cost 10,000 dollars. And it'll be worth every penny. And it'll be obsolete in a week.

Jesse in Japan - you're right! The next will be called Super SSD, then in a few years it will be followed by the Mega SSD, but we should forget the following Hyper SSD 500 Terrabytes 128GB/sec in 1.5" so we can watch downloaded films at 8K on our Super-Gigga-Hyper-Mega definition TV...