News SSDs barely dint 2009 notebook market

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/06/29/ssds-barely-dint-2009-notebook-market/1

According to a report from DRAMeXchange, solid state storage will make a poor showing this year - accounting for a mere 1.5 percent of notebook shipments.

 

Right now for most people the cost and reduced storage space doesn't outweigh the benefits. Plus most people don't know what those benefits are.

 

first paragraph, should read far lower seek times, but reads as far higher!

 

The only thing stopping me getting one is the cost of the drives. FOr what I use my laptop for a smallish drive wouldn't bother me, but they increased speed/reliability would be awesome.

 

in my laptop price and capacity is most important to me. speed doesnt really bother me tbh

i think they dont realise that alot of people, maybe not as may here use their laptop as a primary computer

 

"Solid state drives may offer a wide range of improvements over their mechanical counterparts – including far higher seek times, lower power draw, and improved resilience to shock and temperature – but it seems that the notebook industry still isn't convinced by their merits."

Eh?

 

People have a problem with the perceived value of these drives (myself included). They feel the price is still in 'new adopter' territory and will simply wait until the price becomes reasonable. (also myself included)

I do think that the companies who make these SSD's are charging a premium that the current market is not willing to bear (a bit like NVidia did when they used to sell 7800 GTX 512's for £500 !)

Also, there are potential questions still about how performance 'degrades' over time,poor drivers in the OS's, and stuttering or something which tainted the market a little bit.

I also have an issue buying a 128GB model say for XXX when I think the 256GB model will shortly be the same price... If I wait a little bit longer !

 

Cost is the big driving factor here. As soon as it comes down, the market penetration will go up markedly.

 

Most laptop-buyers don't know what an SSD is, so why would they pay more for one?

 

"Can I plug my printer into it?"

 

£1/GB is the magic number - when we see an SSD that delivers faster performance than a HDD at that pricing, you'll really see them take off.

 

I think for laptops and netbooks, power usage would also be a big issue (and definitely an advantage of SSDs, but how big of an advantage!?).

 

Netbooks are cheap, which instantly rules out SSD because they are expensive.
Laptops are mostly cheap, which instantly rules out SSD because they are expensive.
Desktops are mostly cheap, which instantly rules out SSD because they are expensive.

Does anyone see a trend here?

SSD won't be commonplace for another couple more process shrinks. Even then it will be for system drives not media storage, and it will still cost significantly more then a HDD of the same size.

 

my prediction is 1-2 years and we'll see them take off, price goes down performance goes up and the advantages over physical storage are there.

this is how it's been for all of life, blu ray drives didn't take off fast, neither did dvd or really any other new consumer electronic device

 

It takes time for new tech to sink in, like metarinka said, blueray, DVD, VHS, beta-max......


They'll sink in soon enough

 

I think the title should be dent instead of dint, unless if this is some British lingo that I don't know.

 

Lol I find it hilarious that you say 2009 might be a disappointing year for the SSD when a few weeks ago there was a blog post saying 2009: The year of the SSD or something like that

I really think the max I would pay for an SSD would be £1.50 per GB for a 128GB for both Windows and Linux then use a 640GB HDD for storage. If I did buy one now I'd only use it for linux but Ubuntu 9.04 being uber fast at boot up and everything with 9.10 supposedly even quicker why bother

 

Don't recall beta-max ever sinking in. Only sinking!

 

Probably one of the reasons SSDs aren't being used in traditional laptops so much is because companies and buyers aren't focusing on them as much anymore. Performance enthusiasts tend towards desktops, and tech enthusiast who want portable devices would go for a smaller ultra-portable netbook. If you were in fact looking for a performance laptop, chances are it wouldn't be moved that much anyway and you wouldn't be that concerned about the power draw.