[Macworld]

Post your comments for Toshiba rolls out 512GB SSD here

[macFanDave]

Just in time for Phil Schiller to announce it MacBook Pros and Airs.
I'm telling you. . .Schiller is going to knock our socks off!

[dwilliams]

Keep dreaming....I'd rather see them reduce the price of the MacBook Pros or release a MacBook with a FireWire 800 port...
Until then, anyone from Apple can stay in Cupertino and talk to walls instead of people...

[natmusak]

dwilliams said:

Keep dreaming....I'd rather see them reduce the price of the MacBook Pros or release a MacBook with a FireWire 800 port...

Until then, anyone from Apple can stay in Cupertino and talk to walls instead of people...

You want Apple to bring FW400 back from the dead (hahaha) and drop their computers' price points (which Apple rarely ever does), and you're telling others to keep dreaming? :D

But Samsung is the main supplier of SSDs for Apple, not Toshiba, so I don't think we'll see these specific drives making their way into Mac notebooks yet; the 512GB SSD is 2.5", which wouldn't fit the Air's 1.8" bay.

[dwilliams]

+You want Apple to bring
FW400 back from the dead (hahaha) and drop their computers' price
points (which Apple rarely ever does), and you're telling others to
keep dreaming?+

I want Apple to provide Firewire 800. I thought I made that clear in my post. I think that people are dreaming if any SSD over 256GB will make it to Apple laptops this year. That's where my "keep dreaming" reference came in...

If Toshiba's SSDs are 2.5", then that makes sense for the MacBook and MacBook Pros, which I referenced.

Reading someone's post before hitting "reply" is usually good, too...

[natmusak]

dwilliams said:

>I want Apple to provide Firewire 800. I thought I made that clear in my post. I think that people are dreaming if any SSD over 256GB will make it to Apple laptops this year. That's where my "keep dreaming" reference came in...
Wow, I do not know how I missed that! 0_0
I take back my claim. I also agree, I'd like to see FW800 on all Macs (MacBook and Air). :)

>If Toshiba's SSDs are 2.5", then that makes sense for the MacBook and MacBook Pros, which I referenced.
Er...that's fine but I hit return a couple times in my post between my first comment about FW and my second about the manufacturer of SSDs so as not to appear to be responding to your comments on that matter. ;)

Quote

Reading someone's post before hitting "reply" is usually good, too...

Agreed.

[drimwit]

Yawn. Who cares about these drives when they still cost the earth? When they're merely twice the price of mechanical drives it might be time to get interested.

[hmurchison]

Frankly I'm tired of the SSD hype announcements. I agree with drimwit...does it really matter if the drive is more than your notebook?

[ChasmoeBrown]

I'm also missing the hyperbole that SSDs have become. I've had almost no trouble with mechanical drive for years. They're getting smaller in size, larger in capacity and cheaper in price all the time. Kinda like Blu-ray - I can wait, especially at those prices.

[natmusak]

ChasmoeBrown said:

I'm also missing the hyperbole that SSDs have become. I've had almost no trouble with mechanical drive for years. They're getting smaller in size, larger in capacity and cheaper in price all the time. Kinda like Blu-ray - I can wait, especially at those prices.

Let's see...faster reads, faster boot up, no waiting for a disk to spin up, zero moving parts, read times remain constant regardless of space used up (HDD read times slow down quite a bit as they fill up), and an overall zippier experience. At the beginning of this year a piddley 64GB SSD cost around $1000. Now, for around half that price ($600), you can get one with twice the capacity (128GB).

[heisetax]

I picked up a 1.5 TB Seagate drive for 4120 a couple of weeks ago. I've seen the new Seagate 500 GB 7200 rpm 2.5" drive for $134. It will be awhile before the SSDs come in at that price point. By that time where will hard drives be? The future may be SSDs, but how far in the future. BluRay had much promise, but all of the copy protection will probably keep it out of the mainstream market for sometime to come. BluRay may have won the battle with HD-DVD. But it is stumbling big time in the adoption over regular DVD.

SSDs have to overcome 3 items. The most obvious is price. But the second is the amount of storage. 512 GB puts the SSD on par with the 500 GB hard drives. The third is the number of read/write cycles that are available before break down. These will all be solved in the future. That future may come before BluRay is commonly accepted. With 1.5TB hard drives costing $120 or less, I don't want anything to do with BluRay. With tray FW800 or eSATA drives, it is easier to change drives than a BluRay disc.

The future will show if either of us is in any way correct. SSDs for the rich, BluRay for those that can live with copy protection.

[natmusak]

atticusf said:

These new SSD drives don't have FW 800 ports, so I'm not buying one. What is Toshiba thinking? Toshiba is doomed. I hate them. I hate everyone.

Hah, was about to say "erm, they're internal drives," but I sense sarcasm. :D

[Warning]

Yes, they're expensive but they're almost 4 times faster (at least if the read/write performance is to be believed in Toshiba's case...we already know Intel X25-Ms are 4 times faster), and they also last for pretty much ever (and by ever I mean thrice as long as a mechanical drive.

[Warning]

heisetax said:

SSDs have to overcome 3 items. The most obvious is price. But the second is the amount of storage. 512 GB puts the SSD on par with the 500 GB hard drives. The third is the number of read/write cycles that are available before break down. These will all be solved in the future.

The first two are going to be solved probably within the next 4 years. The price of SSD has dropped a huge deal within the past year alone.

The third has already been solved. The number of read-write cycles that are available before 'break down' far exceeds the lifetime of a mechanical drive. And because the controller roughly knows how many read-write cycles are left, it can warn the user in advance so that the data is transfered safely from one drive to another.