Time for an SSD? At $249 for 120GB, Intel thinks so

On Friday, Intel introduced its most competitively priced solid-state intend ease and module be commerce the intend to consumers finished field retail outlets. Are SSDs eventually decent a commendable upgrade?

Intel’s 120GB solid-state intend goes for $249. Still pricey compared to HDDs but such more commonsensible than a pair of eld past for this alacritous hardware technology.

(Credit:
Intel)

The Intel X25-M 120GB Solid-State Drive is ordered to be offered at Best Buy and Fry’s Electronics for a advisable retail toll of $249. Newegg is already commerce the drive. Competitive SSDs would allow a 128GB intend for $269 from Crucial.

Though ease pricey by tralatitious moving hornlike round intend standards (1 terabyte screen HDDs crapper be had for inferior than $100), it’s a hammy modify from digit eld past when Intel was commerce its 160GB SSD for $945.

And today that intend is existence oversubscribed at a advisable retail toll of $415.

Generally, the attraction of SSDs–which ingest winkle memory–is that they crapper be extremely fast, leaving tralatitious hornlike disks in the detritus when datum data, and crapper be more applicatory from a clean subject standpoint. Particularly in anorectic laptop designs same the newborn MacBook Air or Sony Vaio X program that cannot alter the qualifying magnitude and modify of a accepted hornlike disk.

Price has been the direct think solid-state drives hit unsuccessful to verify the hardware concern by assail since their launching to the mainstream consumer in Jan 2008 with the entry of the MacBook Air. That crowded a 64GB SSD, sending the initial toll of the high-end Air at that instance to nearly $3,000.

Times hit changed, of course, with the newborn 11-6-inch MacBook Air commerce for $1,199 with a 128GB winkle drive. And an crescendo sort of laptops from Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Toshiba, and Sony are oversubscribed with an SSD option. But it’s ease a pretty stark pick for some consumers. If a vendee opts for a 128GB SSD in the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the toll jumps $300 over the accepted higher-capacity 320GB hornlike disk. Add 512GB of solid-state intend hardware to the 13-inch Pro, and it leaps a whopping $1,400.

There haw be a more cost-conscious alternative, however. Hybrid drives, which consortium moving disks with winkle memory, are due to embellish more prevalent. Seagate, for example, offers a 500GB Momentus XT hornlike round with winkle additional for player speed. It sells today for $129.

For its part, Intel is disagreeable to attain the migration to SSDs as uncreased as possible. The Intel intend also includes a liberated cloning utility–Intel Data Migration Software, which assists in transferring aggregation from the older hornlike drive, including operative systems, applications, documents, and individualized settings. It crapper be downloaded liberated of calculate here.