Hewlett Packard has a new “ultra-slim” PC available starting at $729 with an optional 16GB solid-state hard drive for an additional $328 if you configure one to your liking.
So for almost half the value of the computer, you can go from an 80GB SATA hard drive to a 16GB solid-state drive.
It’s nice that HP and others are deciding to at least offer these solid state drives, but it’ll be even more exciting when the price of the drives moves from the thermosphere through the mesosphere, then down, down, down through the stratosphere, eventually settling in the troposphere with all the other hard drives.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’d like to own a computer with a solid-state drive (even if it means giving up storage capacity) but only when it’s only marginally more expensive or the same price as a regular drive.
How much (if any) would you pay for a solid-state drive?
HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-slim Desktop PC Small & Medium Business [HP.com] via CNET
Nah, just me, but I’d wait until they’re the same price (I’m cheap). Oh, and you can do a solid state drive pc. Take an old thumb drive, throw a copy of Slax on it and set your boot order. Done. Whether you take out the hdd is up to you, but it’s definitely doable.
SSD’s don’t give that much of a performance boost, and in a desktop it just doesn’t make sense. Spend the money on RAM, a good video card, and a better traditional hard drive. A 10k SAS drive would be nice.
I do not think that SSD’s are to the level of actually replacing HDD’s in desktop PC’s for traditional storage practices (cost prohibitive) but they are more for use as specialized drives.
We are using 16GB SSD’s for SQL database storage to increase random read/writes. And the performance increases are tremendous, SSD 0.4 millisecond transfer speed for 4K block size vs 10.8 millisecond transfer speed for traditional HDD for the same size. It is in this fashion that SSD’s are being used. I guess it just depends on what you need that increase for and how much you are willing to pay for it.
No distribution in Europe (EMEA), only for USA !!! Why ????