Basingstoke 19th March 2010 - Origin Storage has applauded Intel's announcement of plans for a 40 gigabyte solid state drive (SSD) pricing in at a breakthrough $125.00 and says it will put SSD technology firmly on the storage map for consumers and businesses.
"This is a really good-sized drive as SSDs go, but at the price, it starts to become possible for companies to install the drives in their regular PCs as on-system back-up storage for critical data, such as customer databases and working documents," said Andy Cordial, managing director with the storage systems integrations specialist.
"There's also an opportunity for PC vendors to go completely SSD and install a couple of these drives in a basic desktop, for use in corporate network environment," he added.
According to Cordial - whose firm supplies SSD solutions, as well as secure magnetic storage options for companies - there is also a strong chance that netbook vendors will start installing this drive in their upcoming machines, as well as the expected surge of tablet computers expected to arrive this summer in the wake of the Apple iPad.
The $125 price point, says the Origin Storage managing director, is a sweet spot as far as pricing and value goes, and since the drive is billed as being four times faster than a 7,200 rpm magnetic hard drive, its performance is also star quality.
The industry, he explained, is still at the stage where it's going to be around five years before SSDs are large enough - and priced - to truly start replacing regular hard drives in PCs and laptops.
"But at this price/performance level, especially with the clear speed advantage, you're going to see a lot of netbooks and iPad clones with this drive and others in its family installed, since the speed helps to compensate for the slower processors you see in highly portable computers," he said.
"I think it will also be interesting to see if PC vendors install an Intel SSD for the operating system and other standard program files on the machine, and then use a larger magnetic drive for the data. That way users will get the best of both worlds," he added.
For more on the new Intel $125 / 40GB solid state drive: http://bit.ly/7DmQVo
For more on Origin Storage: www.originstorage.com
