SSD In New Laptops From HP And Dell
SSD stands for either Solid State Disk or Solid State Drive (depending on who you ask) – but who cares… we’ll just call it SSD. SSD is the term used to describe any storage device that doesn’t have moving parts. Examples of this are the USB keys you see floating around and those memory cards you put in your digital camera. They’ve been making them with more and more capacity and they have finally come to the point where they can replace the hard drive in your computer! HP and Dell, according to an article at Ars Technica, are among the first to offer some laptops with SSD instead of regular hard drives.
Why does this matter? SSD has no moving parts so it will be silent (no more whirring noises), cooler, lighter, smaller, and more reliable. If you drop your laptop, the delicate parts inside a regular hard drive can be knocked out of what loosing your data – SSD can take the hit. They also use much less power so this will add 2 factors to laptop users – more battery life and/or smaller batteries!
There’s always a downside though… right now it is DAMN expensive. Adding a 64GB SSD to your HP laptop will tack on an extra $1000. Alienware offers a 2 drive solution for $2000 – yikes! It will eventually come down in price though so just wait for the “must have it now” guys to buy ‘em up and it’ll be more reasonable in about 6-8 months.
I can’t wait for these to be common in desktops… I’m really tired of hearing that whirring noise…
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