Laptops to eliminate spinning hard drives.

[Looneybomber]

Following up on Sony's announcement of a 32GB solid state drive (SSD) option in its new Vaio Type-G line, Dell yesterday announced the availability of an SSD option its Latitude D420 and D620 notebooks.

The idea behind SSD is that, with solid state technology, the notebooks break before the drives do. They are twice as resilient to force and sudden impacts than a standard HDD platter. Dell has performed impact tests to arrive at this 2x durability number. The other advantages include a more silent system, the reduction of heat in the chassis and, of course, a notable reduction in size.

The 1.8-inch 32GB SanDisk SSD, tha was announced by SanDisk in January, is said to increase read/write performance by up to 23 percent. Dell claims SDD is over three and a half times less likely to fail compared with the drives currently available for the Latitude notebooks. Due to size constraints, the best fit for this technology right now seems to be as a replacement for the 40GB drives found in ultra-portables.

So how much will this security and peace of mind set you back? A cool $549 retail - the same price markup offered by Sony on it's systems. The option is available in Dell's build-to-order system. Currently the drive is already available in North and South America. SSD availability in Europe and Asia was unannounced as of this time.

For more information, please visit http://www.sandisk.com.

http://www.audioholics.com/new....html

[Tyler Durden]

Sounds interesting... wonder if it will be a hit, or fail?

[Veriest1]

I think, given time, it will succeed considering the benefits are quite tangible and desirable in comparison to things like ZIP drives. Prices will eventually drop just as the price of jump drives and almost all technology of the past have and it isn't unrealistic, given my limited knowldge of the topic, to say they will eventually be standard on almost all laptops and some desktops.
Modified by Veriest1 at 2:16 PM 4/28/2007

[brisknfade]

Give me 300 Gig capacity minimum and im sold.

[Looneybomber]

Give me 300 Gig capacity minimum and im sold.

Right now, that would be quite expensive.

[brisknfade]

Which is why I have to rely on Network drives for the moment

[MattB]

Reliability is also an issue at this point...I've seen several flash drives fail without warning.

[szh]

This link below is not the same product as an internal SSD (does it use a SATA or PATA interface for speed in the Sony and Dell units?), but you can get 16GB USB Flash for about $162 or so. See http://www.amazon.com/USB2-0-F...r=1-3.

Z

[Looneybomber]

Reliability is also an issue at this point...I've seen several flash drives fail without warning.

We must have different professions, but I've seen more HDD's fail than flash drives.

[nametakennow]

Hmm...

I'm in need of a high-capacity desktop drive. I think I may buy a smaller and cheaper one than I was intending to last me a few years til these get cheaper and bigger.

Anyway, disk drives fail far more often than flash drives. My flash drive has survived numerous encounters with water, throwing, dropping, stepping on, etc.

[PoorManQ45]

now they need to get rid of the dvd drive

[HashiriyaS14]

now they need to get rid of the dvd drive

Uh.....why?

That would make it sort of tough to put together a good Home Theater PC, unless you want to use an external DVD transport, which while a hassle, would probably produce a better picture.

[brisknfade]

Anyway, disk drives fail far more often than flash drives. My flash drive has survived numerous encounters with water, throwing, dropping, stepping on, etc.

But HDD drives usually spend their lives inside a computer case, where the only major thing they would have to worry about is heat. I know what your saying though.

Solid State hybrid drives are already availible no? I wouldn't mind having one of those for decent capacity with good speed to boot.

As far as failing hard drives, I know about that all too well. I use to have a batch of those old IBM Desktars that all ended up having the click of death.

[PoorManQ45]

i hate internal dvd drives on laptops

[szh]

i hate internal dvd drives on laptops

Why?

Z

[szh]

As far as failing hard drives, I know about that all too well. I use to have a batch of those old IBM Desktars that all ended up having the click of death.

I have one of those.

Could not get IBM to replace it ... was in the warranty period when it failed, but it was "an OEM unit" and IBM refused to honor the warranty. Too much of a pain for me to deal with it, since it was one drive only, so I tossed it and decided I would never buy an IBM disk drive again.

They lost a potential customer permanently because of their silly attitude. Since then, I have approved over 150 disk drive purchases for my company and make it a point of never approving an IBM disk drive.

Z

[brisknfade]

Hitachi has since bought IBM's Hard drive division and im still staying away from them. I stick to the tried and true Seagates, Western Digital, and Maxtors whom iv'e never ever had a problem with.

[PoorManQ45]

Why?

Z

Too much noise. The DVD drive is usually not well balanced. This leads to vibration.

Also, it sucks up battery power..