Intel Ships X25-V 40GB $125 SSDs Worldwide
The X25-V isn't exactly new. As we reported in January, Newegg already had its claws on the drive, selling it online for $129.99. It was also noted that the drive does sequential reads of up to 170MB/s and write speeds of up to 35MB/s. Consumers willing to dump a bit more money into a SSD could get the meatier X25-M (80GB) which provides up to 250MB/s reads speeds and up to 70MB/s write speeds.
But for the cash-strapped consumer, Intel's new SSD seems like a deal. "The Intel solid-state drive is our top-selling SSD," said Stephen Yang, product manager for solid-state drives at Newegg.com. "This new value entry from Intel means more customers will have the chance to experience the benefits of SSDs, not just in notebooks or high-end PCs, but in mainstream desktops as a boot drive. This is the right price point to help convert more users to SSD computing."
Intel added that the X25-V supports the Microsoft Windows 7 Trim function via the Intel SSD Optimizer. Also included is the Intel SSD Toolbox for Windows 7, as set of utility tools to keep the drive spunky and out-of-the-box fresh. XP and Vista users can download the "enhancements" by heading here.
SSD's are comparable to flash drive's, not performance-wise but the fact that they do not cost much to produce but yet we still get stiffed because they are faster than conventional HDD's. When the first flash drive came out the pricetag was outrageous even though it costs pennys to produce. As time progressed the prices came down and today you can get a 16Gb for less than 20 dollars on e-bay =) . Im not saying that SSD's should come down in price at the same rate that the thumbdrives did but I think that we all know by now that we are not getting a fair price regardless of how fast SSD's are.
Im going to give you another example. My sister works for a company called Cinram (motorola). While many of you might think that the latest smartphone must cost alot to produce, you are actually going to be surprised that the parts needed to build the new Droid cost a mear 17.38$ w/o the battery. Verizon's first pricetag on the Droid was 399.99@ w/ 2 year contract and 599.99$ w/o a contract. Now you can get a Buy one Get one Free for 199.99@ with 2 year contract.. You do the math =)
SSD's are comparable to flash drive's, not performance-wise but the fact that they do not cost much to produce but yet we still get stiffed because they are faster than conventional HDD's. When the first flash drive came out the pricetag was outrageous even though it costs pennys to produce. As time progressed the prices came down and today you can get a 16Gb for less than 20 dollars on e-bay =) . Im not saying that SSD's should come down in price at the same rate that the thumbdrives did but I think that we all know by now that we are not getting a fair price regardless of how fast SSD's are.
Im going to give you another example. My sister works for a company called Cinram (motorola). While many of you might think that the latest smartphone must cost alot to produce, you are actually going to be surprised that the parts needed to build the new Droid cost a mear 17.38$ w/o the battery. Verizon's first pricetag on the Droid was 399.99@ w/ 2 year contract and 599.99$ w/o a contract. Now you can get a Buy one Get one Free for 199.99@ with 2 year contract.. You do the math =)
I'll stick to the 7200.12 1tb, Spinpoint F3 1tb, and the WD black 1tb.
All for less than the 40gb X25-V.
Android? Last time I checked Android is an OS, not a phone.
$125 for 40 gigs... i will pass
A tad of common sense tells you that Android was a typo =) , I was trying to post on three different threads at the same time and one of them had to do with the OS. Yes I meant Droid
Of course parts will be cheaper than labor but that is not the point. The point is that if you do the math you will actually see the reason why company execs get ridiculous bonuses instead of using that income to lower prices on their products and in-turn help out consumer, not screw him over.
I guess in the end it is personal preference
My supervisor has an ASUS laptop paired with a 40Gb SSD drive, we compared numbers and the SSD is about 9% faster than my dual 640's... His SSD was almost 300.00$ when he purchased it, crazy heh?
The issue with the current push for SSD's is that they are relatively expensive for their size. When there's already a technology out there thats larger just not quite as fast and is much cheaper who is going to want something that's barely large enough for their bloated windows OS plus all the updates to it?
Specifically compared to these intel SSDs the average 500gb 7200rpm sata hard drive is 12.5X larger, about twice as fast to write to, just under half the price, and (on average), will last much longer.
In our society we also value the price/performance crown along with the performance crown. Why do you think so many people buy AMD video cards and cpu's? They are cheaper and perform almost as fast as their Intel/nvidia counterparts (and some times outperform them).
Yes there will always be people who just want the fastest thing out there and will spare no expense to have it. Those people are usually the early adopters and they understand that they will pay the price premium for that speed crown. They are an integral part of our economy as well because if they werent around then it would take a lot longer for the prices of new tech to come down. That being said... the very fact that intel is releasing this drive at this price is indicative that the technology is becoming cheaper and that's a great thing. We just need the space on this drive to double and the speed to triple with the price staying the same for it to be a viable option for most people.
I am just waiting now for 2TB drives to drop to sub-$100 and then go from there. Not really interested in overpriced skimpy drives.