Apple has dropped the price of its solid state drive MacBook Air by $500. Now, the useless laptop equipped with a solid state drive can be had for the low, low price of $2,598. That’s with a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor. Note that the upgrade price from the 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz has also dropped, from $300 to $200. Not that solid state drives save you any battery power, mind you. via AppleInsider → Read More
You may have seen the teardown of an Eee 1000H a week ago. That was cool and it also revealed that the hard drive was trivially easy to replace. Of course, the 5400RPM, 80GB drive was never meant as a performance piece, more a cost and energy saver than anything. But if you could replace it with something awesome, why wouldn’t you? And that’s just what these guys did. They took a nice, fast Samsung SATA II 64GB SSD, popped it in there, and ran a few tests. Basically, it booted 10 seconds faster, started every program in half the time or less, and had a longer battery life and way better file read times to boot. Of course, this particular SSD costs a grand, but it was more a proof of concept than anything. I look forward to the day these things are standard. It’d give a nice performance boost in Diablo III. → Read More
Toshiba has announced an upcoming speed increase to its line of 1.8-inch hard drives typically found in UMPCs, subnotebooks, netbooks, and various other small computing devices. In August, Toshiba will begin shipping 80GB and 160GB hard drives running at 5,400RPM to manufacturers. Current 1.8-inch drives top out at 4,200RPM. The storage capacities offered by the 160GB MK1617GSG and 80GBMK8017GSG mirror those of larger form factor HDDs, while reducing thestorage footprint by nearly 40 percent compared with the 2.5-inch form factor. Combined with the new micro-SATA connector, Serial-ATA 1.5Gb/s interface and 5,400 RPM spin speed, the MKxx17GSG series offers small and light-weight solutions at increased data transfer rates for enhanced performance in sub-notebook PCs. These new drives should be a good option for people who don’t want to spend the money on solid state drives and the 80GB and 160GB capacities of these faster drives from Toshiba offer exponentially more storage space than SSDs as well. → Read More
We’re still very much in a storage transitionary period here, what with platter-based HDDs being so big and affordable and SSDs creeping up on them both in size and performance-wise. Western Digital isn’t giving up on the HDD yet — they think there’s still a little bite left in that old hound. But they’re giving it a boost. WD is hard at work on a freaky new hard drive, a derivative of its Velociraptor line, except these new ones will be spinning at a hot 20,000RPM, hopefully to bring their read/write speeds in line with SSDs. And they’re supposed to be silent. The idea is that it’s a 2.5″ drive in a 3.5″ enclosure, so they can put extra shock and sound dampeners in there. No one really knows much about these things, but we’ll keep you updated. → Read More
I certainly don’t care to have an SSD in my MBP, but if you’re really itching to get one in your MB or MBP then give Expercom a call and they’ll take care of it for you. Of course, you’ll be paying out the wazoo for a 60GB or 120GB SSD. Your two options are to send your rig into Expercom, or purchase a 15-inch MBP with a 2.4GHz proc/2GB RAM/120GB SSD for $2,649 or a white MB with a 2.2GHz proc/2GB RAM/60GB SSD for $1,649. If you just want to purchase the drive itself for your existing laptop then you’ll have to fork over $600 or $900 and leave your precious in the hands of those at ExperCom for a few days. Because the SSDs are not covered by AppleCare, ExperCom will either service your Mac or re-install the HDD, which you get back with your SSD if you choose to swap them out. Sort of not worth it in my opinion. via TUAW → Read More
SSDs are starting to make their big debut, and I for one welcome our new solid-state overlords. We’ve already seen these in a few high-end laptops and of course all those subnotebooks, but for the most part, mainstream laptops still rely on HDDs. It seems Intel is making a push this year to include SSDs in Centrino-based laptops, and although capacity and performance are becoming less of an issue with SSDs, the cost still places them pretty firmly in the mid range and high end. → Read More
I recently got the chance to test out a few solid state drives sent to me by Texas-based DV Nation. I tried a super fast MemoRight GT 32GB 2.5-inch SSD, and two 32GB Mtron SSDs, one 3.5-inch and one 2.5-inch. I also tested a standard desktop and a standard laptop hard drive to see how they stacked up. Here’s what I found. → Read More
Solid state drives have always excelled in power economy and heat levels, but have faltered in the price-to-performance ratio, and even lagged behind in sheer performance by some measures. That last complaint is valid no longer. Memoright’s high-speed drives operate at far higher speeds than other SSDs on the market, and show nearly double the performance of the closest competitors in the spinning disk category where it counts — or more. → Read More
Cool. It’s still a little rich for my blood, but if you can figure out how to hot-swap the CF cards without losing data, this could be an awesome little gadget. It’s got a SATA interface, but you could probably rig it up to sit outside the computer so you can pop in new pairs of cards whenever you need to. It’s difficult to say whether it’s practical at this point. The board costs $200, then you can buy a couple of these things for $70 each – that’s a 32GB solid-state SATA drive for about $350, or a 64GB one for $560 if you buy 32GB cards. That’s cheaper than the retail alternatives, and you have the benefit of being able to upgrade the capacity for the cost of the media. → Read More
[photopress:FSD56GC25H.jpg,full,right] Super Talent Technology claims that this solid state drive (SSD) is the world’s thinnest, with a capacity of 256MB. Does that really matter to us in any practical sense? Probably not, no, but it’s always fun to look at these “most/biggest/bestest” deals. The FSD56GC25H (easy to remember!) can double as a SATA hard drive thanks to its use of the standard 2.5-inch size and interface. How thin is it? STT says it’s 40 percent thinner than its nearest competitor. That’s nearly half the size, which isn’t unimpressive. You and I, not being OEMs, probably can’t buy it directly, I’m afraid. Via I4U News → Read More
According to an analyst’s recent visit to Asia, a certain unnamed computer manufacturer is seeing a 10-20% failure rate of notebooks with solid state drives. CNET’s Michael Kanellos posits that it’s probably Dell, since it’s “so far the manufacturer that has promoted flash drives in notebooks the most.” Apparently Samsung’s got a solid state drive in the works that corrects most of the issues seen with current drives, according to someone at Dell. The rep wouldn’t comment on the other issue concerning whether or not the high-failing notebooks came from Dell but did acknowledge that flash-based drives aren’t always faster, especially with programs like Microsoft Outlook. The industry is also looking to shift from single-bit flash memory to the more-affordable multi-bit memory but multi-bit is known to be less reliable. So if the single-bit memory is failing at such a high rate, the move to multi-bit wouldn’t be too popular at this time. The industry might start making the shift at the end of the year, which would drive SSD prices down. On the whole, however, flash memory prices have fallen about 50% since Q4 of last year, so they should eventually become much more affordable. Analyst: Returns, technical problems high with flash-based notebooks [Crave] → Read More
Keep it on the down low, but it looks like OCZ has is using Samsung as a source for its 32GB and 64GB SATA II drives. I guess that’s not really that much of a shock. But it’s good news, because OCZ will actually be making these things available naked to consumers, as opposed to Samsung, which has most of its drives locked up in notebooks and such. So if you’re an early adopter, now’s your chance to switch your system disk over to an insanely expensive solid state disk. It’ll only run you half a grand for 32 gigs or a grand for 64. Or if you prefer, wait a little while and get the 128 gig version, and I’ll let you do the math on how much you can expect to shell out for that thing. OCZ SATA II 2.5″ SSD [via DailyTech] → Read More
[photopress:samsung_1_8_inch_ssd_2_small.jpg,full,center] There are some shady rumors going around that SSD memory might be sketchy. The rumors say that after 100,000 writes, the RAM starts to fail. Not so, says Samsung’s Michael Yang. He wants you to know that it might start to fail after 100,000 writes to every single cell in the chip, something that would be virtually impossible. Truly, SSD is the memory format of the future. Less power hungry, lighter, and with no moving parts to break, it will be the hard drive for laptops of the future, with some, like a variant of the MacBook Air, already featuring the technology. Samsung defends flash reliability in solid-state drives [C-Net Blogs] → Read More
Solid state drive capacity and availability continues to grow with the announcement of Mtron’s 128GB 1.8-inch SSD. It’ll have maximum read/write speeds of 120MBps and 100MBps, respectively, and will be targeted at UMPC devices. It’s got a PATA interface, so it can replace most existing notebook hard drives pretty easily. And with the 6X speed bump and half the power consumption (compared to standard drives) that the company claims, it could be a worthy, albeit pricey, contender to your notebook’s hard drive nook. → Read More
We all like the MacBook Air. Well, most of us. I don’t. But if you’re thinking of getting one, and waffling between the HDD and SSD drives, go with the HDD. And don’t take my word for it, take uncle Walt Mossburg’s. His crew ran a series of tests on a standard hard drive-based Air and on a solid state drive-based Air, and found the SSD doesn’t make that much difference in battery life. While it does cut the boot time down considerably, it’s moot when you take into account how fast a Mac boots anyway. Bottom line: Is it worth the extra money? No way. Go HDD and get on with your life. The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg (SSD) and AnandTech’s Anand Lal Shimpi (HDD) have each issued reports on the battery performance of Apple’s new MacBook Air models after putting the notebooks through some extensive real-world tests [Apple Insider] → Read More
[photopress:girlycloudbook.jpg,full,center] I knew it. I told you people, and nobody wanted to listen. I said that the next great tech battleground would be in tiny, ultra-portable PCs and everyone laughed. Well chuckle no more, hombres, because the upgrades coming to the Everex CloudBooks could just start things off with a bang. The director of marketing for Everex says that the next rendition of the little guy will add solid state HDs, larger touchscreens, and girlie coulors to the mix. The CloudBooks have the Eee PC right in its sights, and while it’s too soon to see how things will turn out, it’s a new market we’re definitely keeping an eye on. Future CloudBooks to Have Touch, SSD, 22-inch Screens? [Laptop] → Read More
BiTMICRO has apparently forgotten what decade we hare in and gone straight to the Star Trek era of storage. Their Ultra320 SCSI SSD holds a whopping 1,600 gigabytes of data and has sustained data transfer rates of 230MB/sec. That’s Star Trek, people. Too bad this thing is going to cost Star Trek prices too; a terabyte will run you about $250 now when you’re buying platters. Solid state media is probably five times more expensive (look at the MacBook Air), and something special like this, ten times more expensive. BiTMICRO 1.6TB SSD [Ubergizmo] → Read More
Hewlett Packard has a new “ultra-slim” PC available starting at $729 with an optional 16GB solid-state hard drive for an additional $328 if you configure one to your liking. So for almost half the value of the computer, you can go from an 80GB SATA hard drive to a 16GB solid-state drive. It’s nice that HP and others are deciding to at least offer these solid state drives, but it’ll be even more exciting when the price of the drives moves from the thermosphere through the mesosphere, then down, down, down through the stratosphere, eventually settling in the troposphere with all the other hard drives. I’ll be the first to admit that I’d like to own a computer with a solid-state drive (even if it means giving up storage capacity) but only when it’s only marginally more expensive or the same price as a regular drive. How much (if any) would you pay for a solid-state drive? HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-slim Desktop PC Small & Medium Business [HP.com] via CNET → Read More
We’ve been hearing about these 32GB and even 64GB solid state drives set to make computers faster, less power-hungry, lighter, queiter, less evil, cleaner, and sexier. BiTMICRO is going a step further — no, make that about 20 steps further — by launching this new 832GB solid state drive (SSD) at CES next week. No word on pricing yet, but it promises to be cheaper that comparable drives by utilizing new proprietary technology they’re calling MLC memory, but to us it sounds like Voodoo. We’ll hit this guy up next week in Vegas, and you can look for them to hit shelves 3rd quarter 2008. Forums post [Mac Rumors forums, via Slippery Brick] → Read More
I’m a big fan of Crucial. I have 2GB of RAM in my MacBook from them. I’m also a big fan of today’s announcement regarding their new SSD for notebooks. The 2.5-inch drive will come in 32GB and 64GB models with a low latency of 1ms. It’s hot swappable and slides into the SATA port or you can get an external kit, SK01, that converts the drive for compatibility via USB. No word on price or date, but they’ll become available some time this quarter. Press Release → Read More
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