There’s a big hype with Solid State Drives (SSD) these days and Super Talent is trying to take the lead. The company announced a 2.5-inch, SATA II 128GB SSD dubbed “MasterDrive LX”and the most interesting thing is the price. Only $299 which translates into $2.33 / GB. If the 128 GB model is not close to your price range then Super Talent have prepared a 64GB SSD (same specs) that will be sold for just $179 (that’s $2.79 / GB).

The model is a Super Talent FTM28GO25H model and the specs say that it supports 100 MB reads and 40 MB writes. Are we in the point of no return for the SSD going mainstream on the market?

If you can afford these prices, can you think of a reason why you wouldn’t buy one with such a good dollar-to-gigabyte ratio? I can’t! - via JkOnTheRun

Who would have expected Intel’s X25-M 80GB SSD to be available this week? Uh wait, we all waited for something from them, so that could have been just the one. It’s a 80GB SSD that goes on sale this week and will start selling for $595. Optimized to boost speed and apparently to save you energy this is a 2.5-inch solid state (SSD) drive, but the company also announced a 3.5-inch version.

But wait coz that’s not all. Apparently Intel thinks this is the “top performing storage solution”. Do you disagree guys? I think it’s a lot to say about it, but we’ll see after the world gets it. - via Cnet

Samsung is going to push hard to bring the 250GB SSD by the end of 2008, said flash memory marketing chief Michael Yang. They are already producing the 128GB version that should start shipping in the third quarter of the year while the 64GB SSD is already packed ultra-thin notebooks such as Lenovo ThinkPad X300 or Apple’s MacBook Air.

The new drive is going to use MLC technology (multi level cell) which is slower than the SLC (simple level cell) drive but reduces cost because it stacks more data on the same cell. However, there is no official word on using Parallel ATA like we have in the MacBook Air or they will upgrade to Serial ATA connectors.

Yang also mentioned the fact that they may start working on new dimensions (smaller of course) to make even thinner laptops. So far companies developed on the 1.8 or 2.5-inch platforms.

via CNET