Intel solid-state drive price cuts enough?

Intel has slashed solid-state drive prices, but probably not enough to sway many consumers.

Intel's mainstream, and currently most widely available, 80GB X18-M was cut to $390 from $595--about a 34 percent drop in price. But paying almost $400 for an 80GB drive may still be too much to ask of consumers when, for example, a 160GB, 7,200-rpm laptop hard-disk drive from Toshiba can be had for less than $100 on Amazon.

Solid-state drives, particularly the newest generation of SSDs, typically offer much better performance than hard-disk drives.

Hewlett-Packard, one of the largest users of Intel solid-state drives in both consumer and business laptop lines, provides an even more stark contrast. Adding an 80GB Intel SSD option on the 13-inch HP Pavilion dv3z laptop increases the price by $480 over a 250GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive.

On the desktop it's not much better. Because Intel SSDs benchmark so well, they compete with the fastest hard-disk drives. But they fall short on price per gigabyte.

A 300GB Seagate Cheetah very-high-performance 15,000-rpm hard-disk drive, for instance, is priced at $466.99 at CDW, a major online reseller. (Other resellers sell the drive for less.) The Seagate drive is virtually the same price as the Intel 80GB SSD yet offers vastly more capacity.

Intel also said it is selling its newest laptop-use 160GB X18-M/X-25-M solid-state drive for $765. Its high-performance 32GB X25-E and 64GB X25-E for servers are priced at $415 and $795, respectively.

[Fission25]

5x the capacity or 5x the performance... To many of us that use multiple HDs, the size limitations of an SSD isn't an issue. I never thought too much about the SSDs until I used a friend's computer with one in it. Had Amazon.com deliver an X25-m the next day (even with the older price). When compared to the previous performance of my raid setup the difference is night and day.

[BigGuns149]

There are a lot of people I have encountered that have HDDs that are 70-80% empty so a lot of people are perfectly happy with HDD sizes that they already have. While there are certain applications like a media server where cheap storage is important, a lot of people would prefer speed over capacity and as SSDs increase in capacity the capacity argument for shunning SSDs is slowly going away.

[Lerianis]

For a lot of people (especially those using laptops!) the size issue is a concern. Until they get them into the..... 250GB range for the same price as an 80GB SSD is now..... most people aren't going to bite, who are like myself, with LOADS of files on their computers.

[sparrowhyperion]

It amazes me that people will actually buy something that costs this much per MB. I think Intel priced it for people with more money than grey matter. At a time when companies are literally giving away flash drives up to 16GB for free as promotional items. Intel is charging a major premium for their drives. I don't care how much whining someone does. No-On needs an 80GB drive for almost $400. I just bought three Seagates for $60 EACH for crying out loud. The only people who would see a major performance difference would be 3D modelers, but for them, Capacity is an even bigger issue. These drives will not appreciably speed up Office. Check back with me when they are at the same Dollar to MB cost as current hard drives.

[skillingssucks]

You don't know what you're talking about. Flash thumb drives are not the same technology as SSD's. SSD's are much more expensive to produce...and they're much much faster than traditional usb flash drives. SSD's use multiple NAND chips in parallel format and use data striping and interleaving. By the way, everyone would see a difference with SSD's; the new ones that are coming are up to 5 times fast than a traditional hard drive and multiple times faster than even a Velociraptor drive.

[BigGuns149]

What promotional events are you going to where they are giving out 16GB flash drives? I have gone to several tech events including CES stuffing my bags full of promotional items and *nobody* was giving away anything that capacity. I seriously doubt virtually anybody is giving away anything that capacity at this point.

BTW, the comparison to flash drives isn't even apt. High end flash drives(ie. the kind that rarely are given away as promo items) top out ~30MB/sec read speeds and many of the cheap ones barely top 12MB/sec. Meanwhile you are comparing this to a drive that can top out at upwards of 200MB/sec read speeds and consistently >120MB/sec. Your comparison would be like asking why anyone would buy a Tesla Roadster which costs $109K when you can buy a used Geo Metro. The type of person to buy a Geo Metro probably isn't even in the market for a sports car. The Intel SSDs are clearly designed for a high end market (ie. a niche market) and hence your comparisons to a USB flash drive that at best case scenario is probably a 1/10th of the performance is a silly comparison.

That being said you are incredibly ignorant if you don't see the market for high end SSDs. Take for example a web server where you are more concerned about I/O performance than capacity. Instead of having a huge RAID array with *dozens* of drives one could replace a RAID array with a single SSD. If you are looking at I/O price per dollar SSDs were already decently priced already.

Finally, I think that while you may be holding out for SSDs to reach price per GB parity I think most people will not be waiting so long. Once SSDs hit a price premium that people consider reasonable for the benefits that SSDs offer they will make the leap. Most people didn't wait for TFTs to reach price parity because once they dropped below a price point they were willing to pay they considered the benefits worth the additional cost. The same will be true for SSDs. While the current economy will force people to wait a bit longer to adopt SSDs, but the days where people were giddy for larger HDDs are over.

Except for people doing 3d modeling, video editing, or media servers *most* people are clamoring for more capacity anymore particularly in the consumer market. With the down economy I have been doing a lot of freelance computer work and in the process of backing up people's data I have discovered that a lot of people aren't even filling up 120GB HDDs never mind 500-2000GB HDDs. I've encountered a lot of people who would find 80GB of storage plenty. With SSD prices dropping 50-80% a year we will probably see a comparable drive selling for <$100 in about a year.

[cmgreenjr2]

Oh ye of short memory. It was not that long ago that hard drives were only 50 mB and expensive. Then they were 50 gB and expensive. Now a terabyte harddrive is only $200. The "expensive" solid state drives will go through the same price progression over the next 2 years. Don't be so indignant, you only show your ignorance of history.

[DrtyDogg]

Higher capacity per dollar is not always the answer. In many situations flash drives offer a far better overall value based on requirements. For instance, I just built a network media player my needs where not high capacity, as all media is from a server or the internet, but speed is important so there is no lag with XBMC. Other factors that make SSD perfect for this application where no seek sounds, and no heat generation, both very important in a silent pc setup. GB/$ is important for servers, but not really for all PCs.

[Mr. Dee]

These things will not take off until the recession is over and who knows when this global recession will be over. The manufacturers of SSD's need to get real, the days of overcharging for new technology is over, you gotta come to market,competitive.

[BigGuns149]

The Intel models are higher end SSDs. You can buy a 64GB Patriot drive for close to half this price that still can read at ~150MB/sec. I will agree that SSDs aren't going to be catching on like wildfire in the near future, but if you have paid much attention to prices you will realize that the prices have been falling 50-80% per year. A comparable version of this drive will likely be <$100 within a year and more economic 128GB SSDs will likely fall below $100 by the end of this year.

While I agree that the economy will probably slow the uptake of SSDs in the wider consumer market if the current trend of falling prices continues I don't think that the cost per GB criticism is going to keep people away for more than about a year or so. Given a choice between performance and capacity I think a lot more people are going to go for speed.

I have to differ with you on the overcharging argument. I can buy a 64GB SSD that will be comparable or superior to a 74GB 15K RPM drive in virtually every spec and the SSD only costs about $20 more. I can buy a 256GB SSD for ~$460, which is the same price that CNET noted that a 300GB 15K RPM drive is going for. Considering that the SSD gets considerably better access times I don't find the price premium very big at all. I will agree that Intel's SSDs aren't well priced, but Intel isn't the only vendor of SSDs. For the enterprise/prosumer market SSDs aren't much more expensive than competing HDDs. At least CNET was smart enough to compare SSD prices to 15K HDDs for a change, but I think that people like yourself need to do more research before jumping to conclusions that Intel's price points mean that all SSDs are expensive for the performance that they offer.

[another_cissp]

the days of overcharging for new technology is over. Really it is a conspiracy? It is expensive to build an assembly line for a product. The expense has to be spread out over the life of the assembly line and (gasp) with a little profit. Most business have no idea how long or successful a product will be so they estimate, the longer and more successful a product is, the cheaper it becomes, plus the assembly lines become more efficient.

[skillingssucks]

Once again, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

[cmgreenjr2]

Government and other high end users are already using these and realizing speed advantages over the competition. Price will eventually come down as they are adopted into everyday use and the "Premium" consumers have paid for the R&D. This is as it has always been. Actually if they are now on the market, certain government agencies have probably had them for 2 years already and we have all already benefitted from the advantage over hostile governments and hackers.

[applehazelnut]

You can get a 1TB, 7200-rpm hard drive for just a little bit over $100. At that data density and speed, you get faster read and write rates than these 80GB Intel solid state drives. You do get better seek rates with these solid state drives, but who cares if you find things really fast if you can't pull them out fast. :)

The next generation solid state drives from Intel/Crucial is really where it's at. Unfortunately it'll probably be about 1 to 2 years before they'll come down to reasonable prices if ever. 250 megs read and 250 megs write sound pretty sweet though. But probably not worth $1000. :) It'd be cheaper to get 12GB of DDR3 ram and pre-load everything into memory with Vista.

Intel should just go with Walmart economics instead of Apple economics. There is more at stake than making a proft. :) There is market monopoly. Just ask Microsoft. ;)

Now Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for Windows for like EVER now. Intel should be smart about this.

[BigGuns149]

Faster transfer speeds? Are you smoking dope? I am serious. I have a 1TB Seagate drive and while I agree that it is faster than previous generations of HDD even a 64GB Patriot SSD that is less than half the price of the Intel SSD consistently beats my Seagate 1TB drive. Most 1TB drives peak out at ~120MB/sec read transfer speeds and will descend below 100MB/sec as one approaches the slower part of the drive (ie. closer to the center of the platter). The current generation of Intel SSDs already can reach >200MB/sec read/write so I think that while access time is the main advantage of an SSD it isn't the *only* advantage.

Ultimately I think that Intel realizes that they have strong name recognition and therefore it probably isn't in their best interests to try to sell things cheap if they can reasonably make more money at a higher price point. Intel at least with desktop CPUs has *never* been known for trying to make the best value products and that strategy has worked well for them. The point of a business is to maximize profit NOT to maximize market share. At the end of the day while increasing marketshare is nice shareholders are most interested in interesting profits. Furthermore, the analogy to software isn't so apt. In software particularly with a desktop operating system there is a need to have a minimum market share to keep the amount of software sufficient to maintain a viable option to sell to customers.

"But paying almost $400 for an 80GB drive may still be too much to ask of consumers when, for example, a 160GB, 7,200-rpm laptop hard-disk drive from Toshiba can be had for less than $100 on Amazon."

Typical lame cnet. A 320GB 7200rpm laptop drive can be had for $85 from New Egg or Mwave. It's like you guys don't even try to do this stuff right. Reading cnet is like the old days of walking through CompUSA and just constantly overhearing misinformation from their employees.

[Bernardo Ortiz]

Th biggest problem I see is that I have seen a 2.5" hard drive replacement that accepts 6 SD memory cards and can access them in parallel for about $120. I can buy a 16 GB SD card for ~$30. So if I do this I get more memory and save about $100. This is after Intel's price cuts. The margins are still too high if they want to sell to the average consumer. Too many techies around the US like me that can easily build something cheaper and better themselves with of-the-shelf parts.

[BigGuns149]

SD cards are FAR slower than the Intel SSD or even some of the slower SSDs on the market. An SD card will won't read much faster than 20MB/sec and you are comparing it against an SSD that can read close to 220MB/sec. Even if one presumes that there was no overhead in your SD raid setup, which is a dubious claim the Intel SSD would still be about twice as fast. A real geek wouldn't make such stupid claims that ganging cheap and SLOW SD cards together would make something faster. It is surely cheaper, but it isn't faster than some of the cheaper SSDs on the market nevermind the Intel SSD in question.

I agree with you that the price for these units is too high for most average consumers, but it has little to do with the higher margin because the SSDs in question really are more expensive to produce. You really are getting something for the extra cost although as indicated by the vast ignorance of CNET readers I think that the vendors like Intel selling these SSDs have a lot of potential customers to educate.

[sanwar2]

I just recently heard that the SSDs, should be almost affordable by December of 09. Is that a correct speculation?