This would qualify as one of the most anticipated product releases for many a year – yet it has hit the streets with nary a word. I sort of stumbled onto it through an article within an article; it was kind of an afterthought really. Samsung’s new FlashSSD drives are really pretty amazing. Lighter and faster than conventional drives they are likely to be the front runner to the next big innovation in computing. This will enable machines to get smaller, battery life to get longer and, hopefully, boot times to become dramatically shorter.
The comparison chart on their site says it all, and I would expect things to only get better. Okay, that’s kind of a bonehead statement – duh! Naturally they will evolve and get better… well unless your XP getting replaced, then unreplaced by Vista that is.
I am excited that they are finally starting to make drives for computers out of Flash memory now. Hard disks are the most common point of failure, and one of the most fragile components of any device that employs a spinning disk for storage and function, so this should only lend itself to increase reliability and decrease load times of both laptops and desktops. I would probably only opt for a 60 gb or 80 gb (which are not offered yet, only 16 gb and 64 gb models are available) model for my boot drive, then go back to SATA drives for everything else. Unless I start to shoot and edit a ton of video, there isn’t a need for it really. It would be ideal for backing up data though, and that’s probably going to be the biggest market segment to benefit from the emerging technology. No more tapes, optical discs or huge SAN arrays that suck up power like a Ferrari sucks up gas.