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Samsung Unveils Flash-Based Laptops By Barry Levine May 24, 2006 9:05AM "It's an exciting technological advance," said Nicole d'Onofrio, an analyst at technology research firm Current Analysis. "But, due to the cost and limited memory capacity, it's only going to appeal to a limited market. About 30 percent of the laptops sold in the U.S. in Q1 2006 had a hard drive of 100 gigs or more."   Related Topics Samsung Flash Laptops Hard Drives Latest News Endeavour Inspected for Damage Autism Risk for Kids of Older Mothers Go Online and You Can Save the Planet In Haiti, Relief Gaps Are Spreading U.S. To Form Climate-Change Agency A new chapter in the story of computing has been written. On Tuesday, Samsung announced the world's first commercial PCs sporting NAND flash memory instead of traditional hard drives. The Q1-SSD, an Ultra Mobile PC, and the Q30-SSD, a laptop PC with a 12.1-inch screen, both feature 32-GB flash-based solid state disks (SSDs). With no moving parts, the SSDs offer performance specs that hard drives can only dream about. Samsung said the SSD reads 300 percent more quickly than a normal drive, at 53 MB per second, and writes 150 percent faster, at 28 MB per second. The company, which recently launched a hybrid hard drive with flash on it, said the SSD can "withstand about twice the impact that would cripple a regular hard disk drive." The SSD is a bit lighter than a normal drive and can boot Windows XP about 25 percent to 50 percent more quickly than normal drives. In addition, because they do not spin, the SSDs run completely silently. High Prices The price, however, is something normal hard drives might have nightmares about: $2,430 for the Q1-SSD and $3,700 for the Q30-SSD. Both machines are expected to be available in Korea in June. Some industry observers are impressed with the technical accomplishment, but not with the deal. "It's an exciting technological advance," said Nicole d'Onofrio, an analyst at technology research firm Current Analysis. "But, due to the cost and limited memory capacity, it's only going to appeal to a limited market. About 30 percent of the laptops sold in the U.S. in Q1 2006 had a hard drive of 100 gigs or more." She said the market for these devices would include those who need to operate in a rugged environment, such as the military or high-end salespeople who travel frequently. She predicted that SSDs won't be making a real impact "for at least the next five years." Not Just Yet Joseph Unsworth, an analyst at Gartner, offered a similar take, saying that "32 gigs is not enough for most people, especially at this price point." He pointed out that SSDs as large as 128 GB have been engineered, but he said they are "very expensive" and will only be used right now for the military. "We think a 32-GB SSD will begin to become an alternative choice for consumers by 2008," he added, "but I still see hard drives as having the edge over SSDs, in terms of price per bit, for maybe the next 10 years or more." Other manufacturers might soon be helping Samsung write this new chapter in computing as well. Sony, for instance, has announced it will incorporate an SSD in its new version of the UX50 portable PC, to be released this summer.   Tell Us What You Think Your Comment: Also Visit: iPad Info Center Billions of Bytes Mobile Device Now Apple Info Center TopTechWire.com Advertisement  Computing 1.   Nvidia Auto-Switches Notebook GPU 2.   MS: Windows 7 Doesn't Hurt Battery 3.   Tips for More Windows 7 Productivity 4.   The Pros and Cons of Apple's iPad 5.   IBM Power7 Server Takes on Big Load EPIC Objects To Google-NSA Ties Cyberattack meant to rattle Google? Average Rating: Symbian 3 Is Now Fully Open Source But mobile OS remains linked to Nokia. Average Rating: Google Attack Highlights Black Market Paying for bug info is hotly debated. Average Rating:

Enterprise Hardware Spotlight

Nvidia Auto-Switches Notebook GPU To Save Battery Life Nvidia has taken the wraps off a notebook technology that chooses the best graphics processor for any given application and automatically routes the workload to Nvidia or Intel processors.   Microsoft Says Battery Woes Not Caused By Windows 7 Battery problems on Windows 7 machines are not caused by the operating system. That's the position of Stephen Sinofsky, head of the Windows division, in a long posting on the Windows engineering blog.   IBM's New POWER7 Servers Save Energy with Big Loads IBM has unveiled high-capacity servers that are the first to be based on its new, multi-core POWER7 chip. It said the new line is designed "to manage the most demanding emerging applications."

Mobile Enterprise Spotlight

To Love or Not To Love: Apple iPad Pros and Cons Now that the iPad has officially been announced, opinions are rolling in on this device that combines the features of an iPod, e-reader, and tablet PC. Will the iPad turn fewer heads than the iPhone?   Analysts See iPad Price Drop, with Some Cannibalization Just weeks before Apple officially rolls out the iPad, financial analysts are making pricing predictions. But could the analysis itself hinder the initial demand for the pricey tablet computer?   Bar Codes Go Mobile, Get Hip Again For decades, retailers have used patterns of black dots and lines to encode data onto products. Now, bar codes are gaining favor as an easy way for cell-phone users to view ads and other data instantly.

Enterprise Technology Spotlight

Google May Add Facebook, Twitter Links to Gmail Google will reportedly roll more social-networking features into Gmail, the fastest-growing e-mail service. The new features could save users the trouble of switching to Facebook or Twitter.   IBM's New POWER7 Servers Save Energy with Big Loads IBM has unveiled high-capacity servers that are the first to be based on its new, multi-core POWER7 chip. It said the new line is designed "to manage the most demanding emerging applications."   IBM Opens Eco-Friendly, Cloud-Focused Data Center IBM has opened its latest data center in North Carolina. Big Blue said the $362 million facility in Research Triangle Park is designed to support cloud computing and other new computing models.

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