Time for a Flash-based ("Solid State") Hard Drive?

from "Solid State Disk Drives Are Here" (SanDisk) by Patrick Schmid & Achim Roos; August 13, 2007 at TomsHardware.com

"The time saved when launching applications such as Windows is reason enough for me to purchase one of these drives for my notebook soon. Indeed, real enthusiasts have no option but to invest in a SSD, because the performance is noticeably better than with any other hardware upgrade. For everyone else, I recommend waiting until these products become more affordable, because $400 for a 32 GB SDD is pretty much the cost of a 1 TB hard drive."

> read more (12 pages)

Recommended site: www.SamsungSSD.com

"
64 MB Solid State Drive -- Learn More About Samsung's New SSD W/No Moving Parts! Official Site."

"Leading PC manufacturers are introducing Samsung SSD-based notebooks in the 4th quarter of 2007.

Check back to see where you can buy models driven by the all-Flash SSD. "
(see also http://www.samsung.com/us/business/semiconductor/ )

One thing I noticed was that Dell started offering some thing they referred to obliquely as "Intel Accelerator" or something like that... as it turns out:

"Samsung's 2.5" SATA, 64 GB solid state drive (SSD) is now available with Dell and Alienware notebooks. Alienware has a 128GB SSD configuration with dual 64GB SSD drives, as well as a 64GB SSD combined with a 200GB drive. Dell is offering the Samsung SSD on its XPS™ M1330 ultra-portable, and expects to use it on additional XPS, as well as Latitude™ corporate notebooks and Dell Precision™ mobile workstations soon. "

A quick check on the Alienware site (now owned by Dell) shows the m5550 laptop is now being offered with new drive choices:

You can get a 120 "GB" SATA "1.5 Gb/s" 7,200 RPM drive with 8MB Cache OR, for
$400 more (!) you can get a 32 "GB" SATA Solid State Drive. 32 GB not enough for you? No worries; for a measly $1,000 more than the 320 BillionByte 7200 rpm drive, you can get the 64 "GB" Solid State Drive. ;-)

Footnotes: "GB" means sizes are actually BB (Billion Bytes). The term "1.5 Gb/s" is way to distinguish SATA types and is not an actual reflection of access speed.

[posted by Liberty Miller, Oct 19 2007]