Kingston SSD Now V

Kingston Technology offers three distinct families of SSD, with the SSD Now E series for servers and the SSD Now M series aimed at mainstream performance PCs. These models are exactly the same as the Intel X25-E and X25-M drives, no doubt thanks to the IM Flash Technologies joint venture between Intel and Micron. Kingston SSD …

[Tony Hoyle]

Value??

I'm not sure how £180 can be considered 'good value for money' when it's up against (larger!) hard drives costing £30 a piece. SSD can't compete in the value range because the technology is prohibitively expensive - even to try out experimentally would just be a waste of money at the moment.

From what I've seen on benchmarks the claimed speed boost just isn't there in real world use - the lack of seek time is offset by the slower read (and *much* slower write) times.

[Efros]

I have the 64GB version

cost $109 in a sale, replaced an aging 40GB system drive on an HTPC. It really is noticeable. The menus in Mediaportal are snappier, programs load faster, the OS itself boots a helluva lot quicker. I shifted all the temp files, caches etc to a secondary HD and to be honest any new builds I do will have an SSD for the OS.

[Leo Waldock]

@Tony Hoyle

Tony, if you do a straight comparison of performance between SSD and HDD you may well find the cost prohibitive. If you do swap the OS/apps drive on your PC for an SSD I am convinced you will be impressed by the result. Forget extra RAM - this is the business.

For laptops you also have to add in the peace of mind of having an indestructible drive.

[frank ly]

All I need.....

is 14GB for OpSys, Pagefile, Hiberfile and programs on my laptop. The rest of my 40GB HD is for a bit of headroom, working data and a few movie/music/picture files. Any important data is stored on an external drive.

What I'd like to see is a 32GB SSD drive made up from two lots of 16GB tied together with a simple RAID-0 internal controller - that baby would fly. Add an e-sata port and I can plug in a big fast external hard drive at home; I'm happy to use my 16GB USB stick for working away from home.

When will anybody make this for me?

[Alastair 7]

I need a hybrid drive

I'd love to get one of these SSD drives into my laptop, and I'd be willing to pay for it. However, I've only one one drive bay and I don't want to be messing around with external USB disks. So I need someone to create some kind of 64GB SSD, 250GB HDD hybrid drive. Optimistic? You betcha.

[Anonymous Coward]

Random access time

Isn't the random access time more of a plus than the article makes it out to be? Especially if the drive is used for the OS and applications as suggested.