Intel have just published a video showing the differences between hard drives and (Intel) solid state drives. It’s actually an advert for the latest Intel SSDs and there’s a bit of humor in here, a lot of tight editing and a possible shot in the foot for Ultrabook hybrid hard drives which, under most of these test scenarios, would be just as slow as the standard hard drives.
“The speed you need at the price you want.” says the advert.
The reason I ‘m highlighting this video though is because I know a lot of it is true. I’ve done exactly the same tests myself with the same software used in the video and there’s a huge difference. Joking aside, Intel didn’t need to dramatize and editize (!) this video. I could show you exactly the same effect between the Acer S3 and the Toshiba Z830 and the Toshiba is not even carrying a class-leading SSD. Watch the video below though because it’s an easy one to forward to your friends as an explanation.
Another reason I want to highlight this video is that I believe that the only way forward is SSD. Spinning hard drives have no future in mobile computers and Intel need to push, maybe even subsidize, the growth of the SSD market. A lot of government money is, no doubt, invested in magnetic hard drives but it’s now time to make the switch. The benefits are clear. Lower noise, lower power, greater ruggedness, lower heat and faster speed. Growth in numbers will improve the economics and the Ultrabook is the perfect springboard.
How do you readers feel about the differences between HDD, the variations of ‘hybrid’ HDD+SSD and the pure SSD.?
No doubt the SSD is so much faster and the way forward. But until prices come down, people don’t really care. For the average Joe in the street, he is more concerned about price and how much money comes out from his wallet than to see a couple of seconds of difference here and there when loading applications or doing tasks. Yes people may say they love speed, but not everybody is going to pay premium for it.
So Intel has to lower their prices substantially for the other manufacturers to follow (like OCZ). Intel has to make the drive forward. Lose money a bit initially but make SSD the standard. SSD has been around now for years but the prices seem to drop gradually. Its high time Intel does something. Only then we will see sub $500 ultrabooks which would appeal to the masses.
It’ll take a lot more than cheaper SSD prices to bring about sub $500 Ultrabooks. Since there are a lot of pricey parts going into them besides the SSD.
Really, unless they are using a SSD larger than 128GB then the SSD cost wouldn’t account for much, especially if you balance the saving by adding the cost of a HDD.
SSDs can be gotten for a affordable price at smaller capacities, like there are sub $100 64GB SSDs, it’s just that at higher capacities that they get either too costly and/or too limited.
The only real problem is some people want both decent capacity and performance and providing the capacity at a more affordable pricing is where SSDs have to improve.
Besides, it’s not only Intel involved in SSD pricing and the reason they make deals with other companies are exactly to help reduce pricing as they improve the technology and manufacturing.
Add also it’s quantities that help reduce unit price and that only goes up if there’s a demand.
Fortunately, everything from mobile devices to tablets and Ultrabooks are setting up a huge market for SSDs.
So the combination of the next gen SSD technology, which we should start seeing in products before the end of the year, and the growing SSD using device market should both contribute to produce a more rapid reduction of SSD pricing by the time we start seeing Haswell based systems, which themselves should help reduce the pricing of Ultrabooks…