SSD AND ME

SOLID STATE STORAGE
Many of today’s Solid State Drives (SSDs) offer the promise of improved performance, more consistent responsiveness, increased battery life, superior ruggedness, quicker startup times, and noise and vibration reductions. With prices dropping precipitously, most analysts expect more and more PCs to be sold with SSDs in place of traditional rotating hard disk drives (HDDs.)

SSDs tend to be very fast for random reads. Most SSDs thoroughly trounce traditionally HDDs because the mechanical work required to position a rotating disk head isn’t required. As a result, the better SSDs can perform 4 KB random reads almost 100 times faster than the typical HDD (about 1/10th of a millisecond per read vs. roughly 10 milliseconds.)

Micro Center Announces 64GB SandForce SF-1200 SSD for $99.99
It looks like "everyone" is doing it now; Micro Center has announced a house-branded SSD based on the SF-1200 processor which makes it the first brick and mortar branded SSD with a SandForce processor. The bigger news though is the $99.99 introductory price point on the 64GB capacity. That makes the drive roughly 40% less than other similar-capacity SSDs.

In terms of specs, the 2.5" SATA 3Gb/s drive offers read speeds up to 280MB/s, writes up to 270MB/s and includes the usual SandForce goodies like DuraWrite.

Vertex and Colossus
OCZ has announced updates to its first-generation Vertex and Colossus SSD series. The drives feature Indilinx controllers and affordable price points.

The company has updated the drives with new firmware, designed to make the performance more competitive. Compared to the first-gen drives, the new Plus editions offer improved 4KB random write IOPS and 'excellent' uncompressed data performance. The Colossus Plus features an internal RAID 0 design for up to a claimed 20,000 4KB random write IOPS.

The 2.5-inch Vertex Plus series is available in 32/64/128GB capacities for $74.99/$114.99/$194.99; the Colossus Plus will be offered with up to a 1TB (1024GB) capacity in a 3.5-inch form factor; pricing has not been announced. OCZ has not announced specific availability information.

Intel
It doesn't matter whether you landed on Santa's naughty or nice list this year, or if you even celebrate the holidays, not as far as Intel is concerned. Why? The world's largest chip maker just sent word that it lowered prices and introduced a new model of its SSD product line in time for the holiday buying season.

"Every Christmas, consumers are looking for the latest tech gadget; this year, with prices dropping, the solid-state drive is becoming more mainstream and can make the single greatest improvement to PC performance," said Troy Winslow, director of product marketing for the Intel NAND Solutions Group. "With an SSD, tech shoppers can give the gift of a technology makeover that will help speed up, or breathe new life, into a current PC by just swapping out the hard drive for an SSD."

New pricing for the Intel X25-M in 80GB form has been set to $199, while the 160GB version is now priced at $415. In addition, Intel has gone and released a 120GB model, which the chip maker plans to sell for $249.

Still too rich for your blood? Welcome to the world of SSDs, and not even a price break can hide the fact that these suckers carry a heavy premium when compared to mechanical hard drives. But hey, at least they've finally reached 'affordable' status, especially if you can make do with a lower capacity drive. Intel's X25-V in 40GB form, for example, can be bought for less than a C-note.