SSD drives going mainstream. Best Buy retails two Intel SSD Drives
By Alexis • Jun 23rd, 2010 • Category: Buyer's Guide
- Photo: Intel
Solid State Drives will eventually become the standard. The challenge, of course, is in having them widely adopted. The barrier to adoption is the price tag, but the price tag will only begin to fall once the technology is adopted en masse. The solution? Getting the drives into major electronic chains, which has begun happening, with Best Buy carrying a pair of Intel SSD Drives.
800 stores across the US
Over 800 Best Buy stores across the United States will begin carrying the award winning Intel X25-M, as well as the more ‘affordable’ Intel X25-V, with the X25-M available in 80GB in stores and the X25-V available in a 40GB variation.
The reason these Intel SSD variations retailing in Best Buy is such a big deal is because this represents the very first time Best Buy has ever allocated shelf space to solid state drives by selling them in stores. This is an important step in the adoption of solid state drives, since a massive portion of computer components and hardware is still sold over the counter, and the mainstream presence Best Buy has may just be what this market segment needs to give it a boost.
What are SSDs?
- Photo: Intel
These Intel SSD variations are a subset of a bigger market category – solid state drives. As their name suggests, these drives do not have moving parts, unlike classic hard drives, protecting them from wear and tear. SSDs have a number of other advantages to moving parts drives, but they do have one major disadvantage – price. While the Intel SSD – the X25-V – can be had for about £93 for 40GB of storage, an equivalently priced moving parts drive holds 2TB (yes, 2,000 GB) of data. That’s fifty times the difference in capacity for the same price.
These Intel SSD variations as well as other solid state drives have some way to go before they become truly mainstream, but at least you can by them in regular shops now.
Do any of you own an SSD and, if yes, has it improved the performance of your PC in a significant way?
Tags for this article: Intel SSD, Intel X25-V, solid state drive, SSD drives
