14 DAY TRIAL // There are moments in the IT industry when "a little time ago" sounds like "forever". Maybe this phrase sounds a little too romantic to be true, but stay with me on this one. Take the SSDs for example. 2 months ago there were no such products on the market. And now we have Samsung's 32GB SSD, Ridata's value 16GB $189/$199 (in 1.8" and 2.5" form) SSDs and even a pricy 32GB SSD coming from Sandisk (which by the way sells for about $600). Solid State Hard Drives are here and I feel like I've seen them on the market for a long time.
A-DATA has decided to produce its own SSDs but wanted to enter the market with a bang. Motive for which they are currently sampling 32GB SSDs (ExpressCard size), 64GB SSDs (in 1.8" notebook size) and an impressive 128GB unit (2.5" form factor) with SATA-II connectors. Production is said to start at the beginning of the first quarter and by the middle of the 2nd one the drives will probably be available on the market.
Prices are unknown at the moment but don't expect these flash-based hard disks to turn any heads here since the ones that are already out, are known to be pretty expensive. A quick look at the prices tells me that you should expect to pay at least $1,000 if not more for the 128GB unit. But if you skip the price part, you'll understand that such a hard drive could literally change the way a portable works. Anything from faster boot times to lower consumption is possible when you use an SSD instead of a magnetic hard drive. Keep that in mind, because this moment might be as well the beginning of the end for the classical hard drives.