Tag: Solid-State

Prices on solid-state drives are dropping, and operating systems (particularly Windows 7) are beginning to take advantage of the potential higher speeds of SSDs, so it's a good time to consider slapping one in your computer.

Why Switch?

Though SSDs tend to be faster overall than hard-disk drives, their speed advantage doesn't hold across the board. Normally an SSD reads data at a much quicker rate than an HDD does (Intel claims that a typical HDD takes 4000 microseconds to access your data, versus the advertised 65 ms of the company's 160GB X25-M SSD model); but an SSD's write speeds may be slower than those of a 5400-rpm HDD.

SanDisk Corporation announced that it has begun shipping its next-generation flash memory-based solid state drives (SSD) for netbooks, offering high-performance components at a competitive price.
SanDisk SSD P2 and S2 employ a new technology called nCache, which improves netbook performance. Netbooks are small, low-cost computers that offer consumers a highly portable means of surfing the Internet, accessing email as well as enjoying their favorite music and videos on the go. Market researchers, IDC, project consumer purchases of netbooks to rise from 11.5 million sold in 2008 to 50 million in 2013.