Alienware Has a Thing for SSDs

Solid State Drives (SSD for short) are from some people's point of view the much awaited replacement of the old hard disk drives. They offer a few significant advantages over the mechanical disk drives, mostly a higher read speed, lower power consumption and a more robust design. On the downside is the still low storage capacity and the prohibitive price. So, the old hard disk drives are not in danger to become obsolete too soon and be sent to a hardware museum. A number of system integrators are trying to introduce the SSDs to the general public by using them in desktop or laptop computers, as a supplementing piece of hardware and not as a replacement for hard disk drives.

Alienware, as one of the most high-end system integrators and laptop manufacturers, could not let this occasion slip by, so it was decided: Alienware will integrate SSDs in laptops. "Alienware's new flash-based solid state drive solutions dramatically accelerate performance for mobile storage applications," said Bryan de Zayas, Associate Director of Product Marketing at Alienware, and he was cited by the news site BootDaily. "From blazing load times to rock-solid durability, all the essential features that customers look for in a notebook are maximized in Alienware mobile systems loaded with solid state drives."

SSDs will be available on three Alienware laptops: the Area 51 m9750 and m5550 notebooks as well as the Aurora m9700. The Area 51 notebooks will also offer the option of a RAID 0 array made of SSDs. The m5550 notebook comes with the cheapest Alienware SSD available, a 32GB one that adds only $500 to the total price. RAID 0 options for all laptops are available in both SSD – SSD and SSD – HDD configurations.

The m9700 Aurora is based on an AMD Turion processor so it’s cheaper than the Area 51 models equipped with Intel CPUs, climbing only to $4100 when fully loaded. The m5550 will be available for shipment starting on 31 of July, while the other two models will start on the second and 16th of August, respectively.

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