Flash storage notebooks?

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125038,00.asp

Quote:

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The drive packs 32GB of flash memory into a case the same size as a 1.8-inch hard drive. That capacity is double the 16GB of a prototype device announced by Samsung last year and was made possible by the continuing miniaturization of flash-memory chip technology.

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That's already enough capacity for me!

Quote:

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The SSD technology has three major benefits over hard disks, said Yun. The first is that data access is faster. This could be seen when the SSD-based laptop was booted up alongside the same-model machine with a hard disk. The desktop appeared on the screen of the SSD laptop in about 18 seconds while the hard-drive-based computer took about 31 seconds to reach the same point.

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Sounds great, until you get to the cost. $960 for the drive at this point. Perhaps as time goes on and flash memory gets cheaper, we might see such products in the future. I would be interested, that's for sure.

how fast is it?? any benchies???

Well, boot times were cut almost in half, so I'd imagine that other everyday apps would load possibly 30-40% faster. That would just be a guess, but flash memory is pretty speedy, and depending on the I/O controller of the drive, many flash chips could be written/read at the same time. Even if it was only 5% faster, it would be worth it if you are hard on notebooks. ;)

i acutally was thinking about that after i posted.. it would be cool to read/write at the same time..

Sounds a lot like the PuRAM drives that Liebermann (www.go-l.com) were pushing before they got into serious financial strife. It'll be rather cool when it's affordable.

and when the speed goes up.. as far as i'm concearned it should be 10x faster then a mechanical drive.. too bad it isnt as fast as modern RAM.. that would be so cool..