NOW I can afford one! Awesome! NOT!

I give it another year and they will be.... almost affordable.

OCZ's offerings are almost 1/2 that price and still offer close to the same performance. But has FAR less latency on write speed.

Another day, another non-enough SSD price cut. :\

Maybe if I lied to the federal government and said my computer needed a bailout...

80gb for $335 ? not at this economic ..

if 80gb for 100$, then I might think about it

I would spend $1.50 / GB for a high quality SSD.

don't buy into SSDs quite yet people...

intel is supposedly releasing not only a new line of SSDs late 09... but also a new controller with it... (larger capacity and cheaper to manufacture)


I'm getting these assuming they don't flop and aren't the same $/GB

It's not so much the pricing anymore - for me, it's the seemingly endless confusion of how fast it really is. There's a lot of misinformation out there. I'm concerned that I have to jump through hoops to get it to work well with XP and Vista. (e.g. can't use it on the system drive, can use it on the system drive, never defrag, use it only for reads, not writes, bad for games, good for apps, continuous writes are slow, random writes are slow, etc.)

Reading all the SSD reviews on Newegg, each model and brand seems to be unique and some seem to get horrid reviews mixed with fantastic reviews. It's not a mature technology yet. I consider myself on the cutting edge of technology (most of us on THG are) but I'm going to wait until Microsoft updates their OS to take advantage of SSD's strong suits.

$50! Is that a joke? Sound more like a sale price, and less like a price drop. I expected at least $100.

They are definately the future, but right now they are still too expensive. They should
be affordable in two years. Maybe in two years they can find a way to make them in
higher volume at a much lower price. Chopping 50 dollars off a $700.00 HD isn't
enough to prompt me to buy one. For $ 700.00 i can by a complete CPU, the extra speed is
nice but it will just have to wait.

one word, OCZ VORTEX in your face Intel !.

It might take another five years for them to match current HDD prices $/GB at this rate until a revolutionary and surprising cheap product comes up...

It's nice to see them heading in the correct pricing direction, but it's still way too much money for me. And like JWL3 said, there are so many mixed reviews with them and the technology is so new it'd be difficult to feel comfortable spending so much on something that has a large variable.

I refuse to pay over $100 for a HD.

Simply put, SSD are a new technology. Overpriced with many bugs still. I know SSD will take over HDD in the coming years, but with reports of errors, writing issues and others its not worth the risk to set a new computer to fully SSD at the moment. Like anything else, they need to do hardcore research on what people want. Simply put, we need something that works and isn't to expensive.

Why would anyone pay 600+ bucks for a SSD from intel when you can get a different brand (OCZ, Super talent, ect) in the 100-200 price range?

I'll save 500 bucks and wait an extra 4 seconds for windows to load, or an extra 2 seconds for a videogame level to load... lol

Most THG readers are not cutting edge or even proficient, most are enthusiasts with an overly generous assessment of their own abilities.

Go to Anandtech and read his SSD article and you'll see that SSDs are ready for mainstream use. Some are just better than others, but all are getting better. ARS and Anand tend to have much more in-depth technical explanations of tech, but the 32 page articles is a turn off for some. SSDs just need a price cut and a few new controller technologies to take full advantage of features that are unique to them.

SSDD

Yeah, too little too late. Get an OCZ Vertex.

Again, Not about price this early in the game, it's performance/price. 1 30GB vertex is 115 vs 3 velociraptors and still won't touch the latency of an ssd I want my windows to boot fast. as for my blue ray images they can happily park on a 114 dollar 1.5tb seagate. that's balance. why put big stuff in your os drive?

oh, not to mention the whole computer is insanely fast. load times in software, games av scans etc by a factor of 3 or higher in relative speed!

I wouldn't consider it a "step" in the right direction. It's just how the tech world works as far as I'm concerned. The longer it's out, the cheaper it will get. That is until it reverses due to no longer being in production(DDR1) Still, like everyone noted, I bet any real consumer would have to wait, at the very least, another year before these prices become in the "ehhh, not too too bad" price range.

I'd like to add that size is not an issue, if the manufacturers didn't want to milk us for premium sales we would already have 2-10tb drives by now. Silicone density is much greater and easier to work with than spinning platters, not to mention much cheaper. The metals required for a hard drive make it much more expensive to process than an ssd. when you crack open an SSD you'll find a board slightly larger than that of a platter HDD controller. and much less overhead also is in effect with the incredible MTBF of 100+ years. Much easier to replace parts on a board than fix crashed platters. Not to mention shipping, they are so robust DOA count will be Nill. If it was pre-tested it will arrive working. It is inevitable. Just need to see who will get their feet wet first, Western Digital or Seagate, either way, when this happens they will explode on a global scale, just watch. They both have acquired the means and are working on a release soon. Again, this is also when we will overcome the issues, either the issues get overcome and resellers adopt, or they die off.