Are Consumer Hard Drives Headed Into History?

Lucas123 writes "With NAND flash fabricators ramping up production, per GB prices of solid state drives are expected to drop by more than half by this time next year to about 50 cents. Even so, consumers still look at three things when purchasing a computer: CPU power, memory size, and drive capacity, giving spinning disk the edge. SSD manufacturers like Samsung and SanDisk have tried but failed to change consumer attitudes toward choosing SSDs for their performance, durability and lower power use. But, with the release of the new MacBook Air (sans hard disk drive), Steve Jobs has joined the marketing push and may have the clout to shift the market away from hard drives, even if they're still an order of magnitude cheaper."

Re:Spinning disks have left this customer

[zach_the_lizard]

Wait, I'm supposed to feel like a 14 year old girl again? Damn, I musta missed something in my childhood!

Re:Spinning disks have left this customer

[Dunbal]

makes you feel like a 14 year old girl again

Speaking as the parent of two teenage girls, feeling like a 14 year old girl is not a good thing at all.

Re:This is silly.

[Cyberax]

How's your Intel 80386 is going? It's so reliable that it can still work after 20 years!

SSD give a very noticeable performance boost. However, they cost too much right now, so it's a bit hard to justify them.

Re:Spinning disks have left this customer

[Anonymous Coward]

feeling like a 14 year old girl is not a good thing at all.

Not once I'm through with them.

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[hjf]

You must be new here. It's sacrilege to run a non-Apple program on a mac when there is an Apple alternative.

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[Ethanol-fueled]

Which, by the way, sounds like somebody blowing on the open end of a jug.

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[Low Ranked Craig]

Not the Big Mac, but the McRIb for sure.

Re:This is silly.

[BZ]

SSDs cost about 5x what equivalent size hard drives cost right now, from a brief look at newegg.

So your 4-disk raid will be at 80% of the price of the SSD. And has the minor problem of not actually fitting in your laptop.

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[node 3]

No. Apple sells much more than 20% of >$1,000 PCs (something like 90%).

Re:Spinning disks have left this customer

[Dabido]

I think they mean you are supposed to feel like a 14 year old boy feeling a fourteen year old girl for the first time, again. :-)

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Says Netcraft, obviously.

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[Lord Byron II]

If you had owned a Dell laptop instead of a MacBook Pro, the thieves wouldn't have even bothered to steal it. =)