Laptops come with flash memory then.
This might well be the beginning of the end for the hard disk drive. In mid-May, Dell became the first manufacturer to market a laptop using flash memory instead of a hard drive. Other manufacturers will be joining the company before the year's end with Solid State Disk (SSD) technology of their own. For users, this is all good news.
What about the cost?
Dell is currently offering flash memory with 32 or 64 gigabytes of storage - relatively small compared with hard drives. That's because SSDs are currently more expensive to produce. "The costs are significantly higher than for a comparable laptop with a traditional hard drive," says Christoph Kaub. Consumers should plan on shelling out several hundred more dollars. "We hope that the prices will drop significantly by the end of this year or the beginning of 2008," Kaub says.
Market dynamics?
The usefulness of flash memory in desktop PCs is questionable. Conventional disk drives and RAM maintain a significant cost advantage over SSD. "I think the prices for traditional drives will continue to sink, meaning that SSD will have a hard time competing in the near future," Kaub says.
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