Solid state hard drives in computers

[Mitchell Andrus]

....been on the great laptop safari lately. Dell is offering a flash hard drive in some of it's upper end XPS models.

Very pricey, but we're finally seeing the end of moving parts in the memory flow.

Cameras, camcorders, now computers.

[Benjamin Dahl]

yeah, those sound pretty cool. have to spend some money to be on the front edge of this but a nice picture of what is coming down the line.

[Chuck Wintle]

....been on the great laptop safari lately. Dell is offering a flash hard drive in some of it's upper end XPS models.

Very pricey, but we're finally seeing the end of moving parts in the memory flow.

Cameras, camcorders, now computers.


I agree. The end of electro-mechanical storage devices is in sight. What remains is to up the capacity to match the latest hard drives. But will we still call them hard drives?

[Michael Schapansky]

The SSD drives are being marketed as being shock proof and more reliable than HD's. They can be faster reading information but they are (presently) slower at writing the information. So overall you'll have a slightly slower experience than if you had the mechanical drives. There are a very few high end SSDs that are very fast but they haven't trickled down to the affordable price points yet, at least for me.

[Randal Stevenson]

The SSD drives are being marketed as being shock proof and more reliable than HD's. They can be faster reading information but they are (presently) slower at writing the information. So overall you'll have a slightly slower experience than if you had the mechanical drives. There are a very few high end SSDs that are very fast but they haven't trickled down to the affordable price points yet, at least for me.

Besides the slower writing and less capacity (seen videos comparind SSD to hard drive models of eePC boot up on You Tube), they also have a limited amount of writes. So your more apt to kill them since they are smaller and will be written over on a regular basis. One more thing to think about.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Besides the slower writing and less capacity (seen videos comparind SSD to hard drive models of eePC boot up on You Tube), they also have a limited amount of writes. So your more apt to kill them since they are smaller and will be written over on a regular basis. One more thing to think about.

There will be a learning/stability/reliability curve for sure. I NEVER jump in head first, first. Let the geeks have at 'em for a year or two, then I'll have a look.

In the meantime, the $600.00 up charge knocks it off my wish-list.

[David DeCristoforo]

"But will we still call them hard drives?"

Of course. We still refer to punching up someone's phone number as "dialing" don't we? And to entering data using a keyboard as "typing"? And saving a program on a DVR as "taping"? Etc?

[Pat Germain]

I first worked with solid state drives about five years ago. They were wicked expensive and wicked fast. As far as I know, this hardware was very fast with writes as well as reads; and there was no limit on either. These drives were in a server which took in massive amounts of data, logged it, and sent it out to other servers.

I don't recall the name of the hardware, but we ordered it from a company in Texas which is where they were made.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Yea... but we don't say "color TV" anymore.

yes.. I'm old enough to remember........
.