14 DAY TRIAL // As mentioned in several previous articles, solid state drives continue to invade the market, as we are seeing more and more storage vendors releasing better and higher-capacity SSDs. In addition, several system manufacturers have already introduced some of their new products that have been built to take advantage of the latest in Flash-based storage solutions. Just recently, Lenovo has announced a couple of new ThinkPad portable systems that are equipped with Samsung's latest SSDs.
This is an ongoing trend and it's highly likely that we'll be seeing more systems that sport SSDs as a storage option, as the technology will continue to advance and SSDs will deliver faster performance, higher capacity and better price per Gigabyte. However, until they become a standard solution for the majority of computer users, some of today's more demanding customers can already benefit from a number of systems featuring the latest in SSD technology.
As mentioned above, Samsung's SSDs now equip some of Lenovo's most recent portable systems, including the ThinkPad X200, T400 and T500 notebooks and ThinkPad W500 and W700 mobile workstations. In addition, these high-end SSDs also improve performance for Lenovo's innovative X300 notebook and the recently detailed X200t ThinkPad Tablet PC.
"We are seeing a strong continuation of the push by OEM’s to have more PCs offered with SSD storage, which makes a lot of sense for those who can see its extended value proposition over the life of the notebook," said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. "The fact that Lenovo now also offers SSDs as an option in its ThinkPad ultra-portable notebooks is indicative of the growing popularity of SSDs as a viable storage medium in PCs overall."
These drives feature write speeds of 70MB/s and read speeds of 90MB/s and are built on SATA 3.0GB/s interface. Samsung's SSDs are designed to consume less power than a typical hard drive, with only 0.41 watts when in operating mode and 0.24 watts when idle.