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ssd
tests
Tom's Hardware Corrects Study, Says Solid State Drives Do Improve Battery Life
Tom's Hardware tested battery life in laptops with SSDs yet again and found that they aren't such a power suck, correcting a previous study. SSDs didn't outperform their HDD counterparts in all tests, but combined with Laptop Mag's study I think we can safely put the issue to rest for now. [Tom's Hardware]
ssd
Erica Ogg of CNet informs us that hot on the heels of the $500 price cut for the MacBook Air's 64GB SSD, Dell is offering a 128GB SSD for $600 in their "Latitude, XPS, Alienware and Precision laptop models." I'm glad to see these things moving toward more reasonable prices so quickly, perhaps thanks to recent news of Samsung's cheaper production of parts, but it can never be quick enough. [CNet]
Dell Selling 128GB SSDs in Notebooks for $600
Erica Ogg of CNet informs us that hot on the heels of the $500 price cut for the MacBook Air's 64GB SSD, Dell is offering a 128GB SSD for $600 in their "Latitude, XPS, Alienware and Precision laptop models." I'm glad to see these things moving toward more reasonable prices so quickly, perhaps thanks to recent news of Samsung's cheaper production of parts, but it can never be quick enough. [CNet]
ssds
Samsung Starts Mass Production of Cheap 128GB MLC Solid State Drives
We mentioned it back in February, and Samsung has now come good with its promise, announcing today that it's started mass-production of 128GB SSDs. They're of the slightly slower but cheaper multi-level cell technology, with a read speed of 90MBps and write speed of 70MBps. And Samsung claims they'll have a life span around "20 times longer than the generally accepted 4-5 year life span of a notebook PC hard drive." It'll be interesting to see what this move does to the price of SSDs, particularly now that we like them again. Press release below. More »
ssd
New Study Says Solid State Drives Are Better for Battery Life, Not Worse
I hope this SSD good/bad theme doesn't turn into one of those long-running "good for you/bad for you" food fiascoes (is coffee on the good list again, by the way? Blogging is thirsty work.) A new bit of investigation by Laptopmag seems to challenge the Tom's Hardware study that put SSD's battery performance in the shade. Citing flaws in the original method, the new study tried the drives under a more "real world use" test regime: cycling through webpages over and over. More »
macbook air
MacBook Air With Solid State Drive Gets $500 Price Cut
Apple just ripped $500 off the price tag of their Solid State Drive-based MacBook Airs, which are now $2598, down from $3098. AppleInsider says the cuts came from two components, the 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo, which got a $100 cut, and the 64GB SSD, which got a $400 cut. The sub-$3000 bill should be slightly more appetizing to fans of light laptops. And fans of money. [Apple Store via Apple Insider]
rumor smashed
Swindled: Solid State Drives Don't Extend Battery Life, They Shorten It
Solid state drives (SSDs) are the inevitable future of mobile computing, but a new experiment by Tom's Hardware is extremely disappointing. It ends up that the touted power savings of SSDs over their moving-parts-laden cousins are nonexistent. In fact, SSDs are sucking more power than conventional hard drives. How is this possible? Tom's Hardware thinks they know. More »
ssd
Sub-$500 128GB Drive from OCZ May be the SSD You've Been Saving For
OCZ's new Core Series SSD's are designed to be large and affordable. So the new 2.5-inch SATA II flash drives are coming in 128GB, 64GB and 32GB sizes at $479, $259 and $169 respectively. They don't match up to the 200Mbps read speeds Samsung has promised—managing 135Mbs— but that price point is pretty low. And while they're too big to drop into the smallest laptops (MacBook Air owners will weep), they might be just the ticket for people looking to cheaply upgrade to SSD—OCZ claim ten times faster than their HDDs and half the power. Available "soon." Press release below. More »
hard drives
Western Digital Researching 20,000RPM Hard Disk to Fight Solid State Drives
According to blog Bit-Tech.net, sources in the hard drive industry say that Western Digital (maker of the old world's fastest hard drive) "is working on a 20,000RPM Raptor hard drive to combat" Solid State Drives, since these are going to "be affordable in the next 12 or 18 months." The new Raptor will be a 2.5-inch drive inside a 3.5-inch custom box designed to make it "silent," since a 20,000RPM HD could probably make your ears bleed after a few minutes at fulll speed. But can a mechanical drive compete against solid state? More »
ssd
SanDisks New pSSD is Aimed at Low-Cost Notebooks
SanDisk's new pSSD is a pATA drive aimed at the low-cost notebook PC sector— that range of ULPCs, MIDs and the like. Using Multi-Level Cell and Single-Level flash chip designs, the pSSD will have a read speed of about 39MB/sec and a streaming write speed of about 17MB/sec. Though there's no pricing info available, they'll be released at the beginning of August in 8, 16 and 32 GB capacities. Read on for the full press release. More »
apple
MacBooks Get SSDs (Unofficially)
While it's possible to install standalone solid state hard drives into most any laptop, it's always nice to see services selling preconfigured packages. Right now a company named ExperCom is offering both MacBooks and MacBook Pros with SSDs installed out of the box. And their prices are actually pretty reasonable. More »
ssd
This is the solid-state drive that we've been waiting for: a full 256GB, which Samsung says is "the world's fastest and largest capacity 2.5-inch, MLC-based SSD with SATA II Interface." Sick sequential read and sequential write speeds of 200 and 160 MBps, respectively, put it in the same speed range of more nimble single-level cell SSDs (single vs. multi-level explained). Available in Sept. with mass production starting by "year end" (yay cheaperness), and Sammy says we'll see a 1.8-inch version by then too. Check it out being groped by a lady, along with the press release.
More »
Blazing Samsung 256GB SSD Is the One We've Been Waiting For
This is the solid-state drive that we've been waiting for: a full 256GB, which Samsung says is "the world's fastest and largest capacity 2.5-inch, MLC-based SSD with SATA II Interface." Sick sequential read and sequential write speeds of 200 and 160 MBps, respectively, put it in the same speed range of more nimble single-level cell SSDs (single vs. multi-level explained). Available in Sept. with mass production starting by "year end" (yay cheaperness), and Sammy says we'll see a 1.8-inch version by then too. Check it out being groped by a lady, along with the press release.
More »
unconfirmed
Intel To Bundle SSDs With Centrino 2?
So far, Intel has been lackadaisical in supporting solid state drives, just toying with the market a bit. But according to DigiTimes, Intel will soon be introducing new SSD drives with the Centrino 2 platform as a standard—2.5-inch and 1.8-inch SATA drives with 80GB of storage. In 2009, Intel plans on expanding capacities all the way up to 250GB. That's still a hefty amount of space for standard laptop drives. No word on pricing at the moment, but we're guessing they'll be the most expensive "Centrinos" ever. To see Intel's pitch on SSD, hit the jump.More »
modding eee pc
$3,200 EeePC with 32GB Solid State Drive Now on eBay
Ah, the Asus Eee PC, the little computer that can be modded to do anything, from stealing all your money in an ATM to grabbing all your money on the internet. This one will snatch $3,200 from your account if you want to buy it on eBay, with all the mods except for the 3G card: a 32GB Patriot XT solid state drive (in addition to the included 8GB), a touchscreen and a bunch of other things, an Air Play card to transmit all your sound to any FM radio. Complete specs after the jump. More »
storage
Century DIY SSD Now Goes Up to 2TB (in Theory)
While both Intel and Samsung are promising big drops in SSD prices by the year's end for now they still cost plenty. Unless you want to take the DIY route, and use this nifty gizmo from Century which uses compact flash cards for storage. The new version now accepts CF 3x cards and can create drives between 2GB and a crazy (and impossible, for now) 2TB in size. So you could buy a pair of 32GB CF cards for around $270, add in $192.57 for the DIY drive and you'd have a 64GB SATA SSD for about $460— less than half the cost of the 64GB MacBook Air's drive. Not bad, eh? Available from May 1st. [GeekStuff4U via Akihabaranews]
laptops
Toshiba Ratchets Portege R500 SSD Up To 128GB
Toshiba's under-2-lb. Portege R500 will get its SSD boosted to 128GB, though at a still undeclared but likely super high price, says UK's Register. The machines get a bit of a chip upgrade, too, from Intel's 1.2GHz U7600 Core 2 Duo to a 1.33GHz U7700. The R500 is, to my knowledge, the lightest PC with an internal DVD burner, at least in the US market, but I can't back it 100% because of a little problem called Vista. More »
speculation
20 Percent of SSD Notebooks Failing?
The whole reason to pay the obscene premium for a SSD is because it's supposed to be way more reliable than your average spinny hard drive. According to an analyst at Avian Securities, however, an unnamed "large computer manufacturer" is having 10 to 20 percent of its flash-based notebooks sent back because of technical failure—and still more are being sent back for not matching purchasers' expectations for a total of 20 to 30 percent of SSD-based notebooks getting the heave-ho. Update: Dell flat-out denies the return rates claimed by Avian Securities, saying "it's just not true." More »
ssd
