Intel Unveils 120GB SSD: The X25-M Sweet Spot

hmmmm, I see stripe upgrade coming to me pc soon!

Is it just me, or is it taking a little too long for these to drop to reasonable prices ($.50/GB-$.75/GB)?

dam you guys!!! I just got myself a nice 40GB SSD, (for a painful $130) and you are already making me regret this. Why is it that since the moment that I got this SSD, SSD's have been all over the news??

Lower that $249.00 120GB to $149.00 and we can make a deal Intel. I'll even buy two.

Got 4x80's running in raid0, their nice performance

Just got a nice 120gb for around 240-260$. I like the performance and the size, it was either that or getting a 40gb for around 100-120$.
Which is weird, the higher capacity ones seem to be cheaper in performance/price.

Why are people still so convinced that SSD prices will drop quickly? As long as mechanical hard drives are around and there is high demand for flash (also caused by things like smart phones) there is no reason for the vendors to lower prices. Instead they have been at the same prices roughly since launch and just gotten much faster.

So Intel is offering an inferior product at a higher price? The Sandforce 1200 drives are going for about $225 for 120GB (or less than $200 after rebate), and significantly outpace the Intel drive in read, write and input/output performance! The only reason anyone would make an "educated" purchase of these 120GB Intel drives would be because of Sandforce's unproven reliability? As an OS drive, I would say that a backup image should be ready to go at all times anyway, and I would give my money to Sandforce and really get the most out of current generation SSD technology (at this price point). For the 120GB intel drive to be worth the purchase it would have to be priced at $200 without rebates.

I don't mean to bust your balls but check this out.

http://www.frys.com/product/616588 [...] IN_RSLT_PG

I know it sucks.

Because that is the capitalist model: The first ever launched SSDs should be dropping to reasonable prices, while the newer technology SSDs take their price points. Similar to the gfx card price wars. Get it? There are newer SSDs coming out all the time and the older models are not dropping to lower price points. If demand is really this high, then supply should be following religiously, because nobody would lose money over any investment into an SSD market. But it is not. I feel that by now you should be able to pick up a budget SSD of 80 GB for 50 bucks. Maybe without TRIM, or a newer tech controller, but an SSD none the less giving the middle ground of performance. The article today about HDD raid 0 vs SSD raid 0 showed the tremendous gap we already know exists. There is a middle ground, which (I think seagate?) tried to cover by combining the technologies with their hybrids. I haven't seen any performance figures for these, but it is a step in the right direction IMO. It is just frustrating as a consumer when there are performance/price gaps that are insurmountable. Imagine no available vehicle in the 10k-30k price range, and your only choices are a neon or a benz? Wtf?

Prices for SSD tech will not go down due to Obama Care.

They work hard to keep the margains up, better revenue now and ensures that a product can be pricecut later and still allow for pretty good proffit.

Sadly the nand prices wich are the major cost for the SSD's don't seem to drop at the rate they should considering the improved yeilds and the number of "shrinks" they made to date - Samsung for instance is world famous for its numbers of price cartels in the part and is still world leading the production of the nand if im not mistaken.

Maby something for the EU & US goverment should look into for some easy money!

You'll be sadly disappointed when all this SSD "boot drive" garbage is a thing of the past this time next year. I'm waiting out until I can get a 256GB SSDfor < $200. Although a stretch, I think this time next year it will be near that price.

I remember when hard drives hit 1 dollar per megabyte in the 90's when the 500MB drives for $500 came out.

can't wait till the new sandforce drives come out next year

Cant buy till a GB =< a dollar. No matter how good the tech is. :-/

It isn't reasonable to expect SSD tech to be that far under a $ per GB when your traditional mechanical HD's are at that price point many of you claim to be waiting for. They may come closer to $1/GB but demanding that they'll be at the same price point as older tech is kind of like insisting on a Tesla motorsport electric car to be the price of a Toyota Corolla. It's just not going to happen.

I'd rather see the larger drive come down in price than, pay more per GB. I bought a G Skill 120GB drive back in Aug. I just wish I could afford the 200+ GB drives. With Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit installed along with some games & MS office 2003 I only have about 5-6 GB free....

Then you have too much other crap on your drive....I have Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, office ultimate 2007, a few games like Crysis and GOW (10GB each) and my 160GB Intel SSD still has about 50 GB free.....

move your songs and videos to a mechanical disk....they get no benefit from being on your ssd

Just reread my post and realized that means I used about 110G of my drive.....my bad!

I think the solution is to just keep core stuff on the ssd (excluding games which have to go on the hdd just due to their size)

My desktop is an 80GB Intel G2 and a WD6400AAKS and that is working great for me so far. Laptop is a 160GB G2 and WD6400BEVT which is also working well (I have alot more files on the laptop from school and such)

The price drop model has been quite aggressive over the years. This Flash is in super high demand for the manufacturing capabilities today, so obviously that is the problem.

So while SSDs might not be reasonably priced for the masses, SLC and MLC NAND Flash based products are reasonably priced for someone.

I agree with the many others on here, they are taking WAY to long to bring the price down on SSD's. I dont know what it costs to manufacture a drive but memory doesnt cost that darn much.

many people here are very uninformed and teh fact they are talkinga bout how these need faster price drops obviously hasn't watched the prices on SSD"s AT ALL,and to any one that has watched the price pluments these whiney people come off as compeltely ignorant. just a little over 3 years ago a 80 to 120 gig SSD woudlavhe costed you around the nieghbor hood of a 1000 dollars . and drives that exceeded 160 gb , were quite commonly costing several thousand dollars. with no offerning above 320 gigs. and today youc an get a 80 gig for about 200 and i've even seen some 200-250 gig SDD;s for around 300-400 bucks now. in comparision lcd Tv's a much more mainstream technology, didn't drop prices any where near that fast.

some tiems i think opeople really expect to much out of a amrket even when the market is meeting demand faster than any other market ever could or has done.

Saw a 60GB SSD for $60 on Newegg on Nov 1, was sold out by noon! I wanted to cry. Gives me hope for another great deal this year though. Happy SSD hunting to all.

a few companies hve released tetra bite SDD's though right now they cost a small fortune (4000-5000) but not that long about a 250 gig SSD costed this same range , so i give it about 3-4 years before a tetra bite SSD comes down to around 300-400 buchs that a 250-300 gig oen cost today. I'll likely go SSD when i can atleat get a 512 gig one for around 300 bucks my self,but who know my current comp likely ahs a few more eyars on it so never know perhaps the tetra bite ones will drop drasticallya s more companies produce them in that size.

after all the talk, i finally just went out and bought one (crucial 128 gig nova) bought it local for about 240ish after tax. Hands down, its the best upgrade i've ever added to any one of my personal computer i've built. (which have been numerous through the years, and some quite expensive)
I was stepping up from 2x74gig WD raptors in raid-0 and the performance is slap you in the face obvious.
Highly recomended as your next upgrade, even above a new proccessor or video card!

It's amazing how many people are complaining about the price on here, then talking about the performance with the one they bought. You wanna send a msg to tell them that prices are too high? Don't buy the product. That's just like the people complaining about DX9 Graphics being terrible, but, don't want to upgrade past XP. Grow up, move on. Money talks, stop complaining and do something about it.

If you look up prices on 8G-16G SDHC cards, they are below $1/GB for quite some time now, interface, package, distribution and all. Install 16 16G cards, and you have 256G drive at 16x speed of 16G SDHC card for $250 even without cost savings from only single body, package, distribution etc (128M DDR memory buffers should cost just a couple of bucks given prices for 2G DIMMs). Obviously at $600 for 256G SSD now the producers of the SSDs and/or controllers have quite a margin.

Considering that there are already very reasonable SF based SSDs that are of the 128GB breed out there and plentiful for around $199-$249 I don't see this as being shattering.

Two words. Black Friday. Patience my friend. Word is that there will be several online places with 80GB SSDs for $75.

To me, as a gamer, I would want my games on the SSD. Loading of games is where most of the waiting occurs. And since I'm a Steam kind of guy, i'd have to have all of my Steam games on the SSD drive. Looking at my current C: drive, Win XP, I'm already using over 200GB, so I'm waiting for a nice 256GB SSD to come around in a smart price range. They're just too high still to take my money.
And yes, SSD's will come down in price much faster if you all would just act like me and WAIT!!! The technology is getting better and better every day. When I buy my new SSD, I'm not going to have to worry about degradation or any of that mess. They will have conquered it.