Price of 64GB flash disk drive to plummet
 

While $1000 for a 64GB disk drive sounds a bit steep, the 2.5-inch flash based drives have some unique features, like ultra-low power consumption, 1000G shock resistance, and low weight. For the ordinary consumer this will translate into future notebook PCs with much longer battery life, lower weight, and greater durability. Prices are currently exorbitant, with a 32GB drive, half the 64GB promised by PQI, selling for $1700. So to get prices below $1000 as fast as PQI predicts would be a tremendous improvement, and a sign of much lower prices to come.

Re: Price of 64GB flash disk drive to plummet
 

understatement of the year...

for a flash HD it's cheap and I know why they are doing it, they want to advance on the expierence curve for the high capacity chips as fast as possible

$1000 for a HDD , no matter how fast/advanced it is, is never "cheap"...

same could be said for the prices of the Raptors which have several disadvantages and their speed increase is not that big, yet people are buying them

in theory there should be quite the performance difference right, as the hdd is still the slowest part in any computer

the bonuses are:

lower power consumption (in Laptops the HD is becoming a major offender now that everything else is tuned down)

zero noise

zero vibration

more reliable against crashes

faster (anyone got numbers?)

smaller


that's plenty of pluses vs the two maluses of price and capacity (altough 64 GB should be plenty for a Laptop and a OS/Program drive)


How do they compare heat wise?

are they faster for large file transfers?

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=6321

What is the typical read/write of other drives?

40-70Mb/s
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/250_3.html

this might even be a better alternative, ~$400 a SCSI drive which eats raptors for lunch:)
http://www.storagereview.com/article...U3147NP_1.html



booting windows faster is all fine and dandy but if large file transfer take longer than an ordinary drive, these flash drives might not yet be "our saviors" :)