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Dell will sell you a 128GB solid state drive for an unprecedented $649. But wait. An IDC report claims the performance gap between solid state drives and lower-cost high-performance hard disk drives is not that significant at the system level.

Solid state drive offered by Dell

(Credit: Dell Computer)

Solid state drives are attracting more scrutiny as they increase in capacity and decrease in price. (Dell's $649 drive is a radical price drop since many drives with half the capacity still sell for more than $700.)

Solid state drives (SSDs) are considered to be generally more power efficient, faster, and in some respects more reliable than hard disk drives.

IDC tested 2.5-inch 7200 rpm desktop drives against SSDs and found that previous tests comparing SSDs and hard disk drives may be misleading, according to SearchStorage.com, which cited the IDC report.

"Many tests have been done comparing 4200 rpm hard drives to SSDs," said IDC analyst David Reinsel. "But 5400 rpm is now mainstream and even 7200 rpm disks are available." The IDC report says the performance gap between computers with 7200 rpm 2.5-inch drives and those with SSDs was smaller than expected because the performance of the entire system must be taken into account.

(It should be noted that 4200 rpm hard disk drives are sometimes used in comparative testing because 4200 rpm drives are offered along with SSDs in laptops such as the MacBook Air and Hewlett-Packard 2510p.)

IDC's Reinsel also said that system redesigns will be necessary in both PCs and enterprise storage systems to reap the full benefits of SSDs. One of the challenges is that SSDs generally write data more slowly than they read data.

In related news, The Tech Report also did benchmarking of SSDs and 2.5-inch hard disk drives rated at 5400 and 7200 rpm. Generally, the SSDs were faster (in some cases much faster) but not in every benchmark and not by that much in some benchmarks.

SSDs have received a lot more attention since companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba have adopted them as alternatives to hard disk drives in laptops. Lesser known is that SSDs are also being deployed by large corporations in server-related applications. Companies like Citibank and American Express peg server performance on IOPS or input/output operations per second where SSDs beat hard disk drives handily.

The IDC report follows other reviews that claim solid state drives (SSDs) are not as power efficient as manufacturers claim--though the power-efficiency testing methodology used by some review sites has been disputed by manufacturers.

IDC abstract here.

Despite concerns that a weakening U.S. economy would slow spending here and elsewhere, the PC market is chugging along respectably.

The market's success was foreshadowed Tuesday by Intel, whose solid quarter demonstrated that there's continued demand for notebook PCs particularly. Shipments of PCs worldwide grew 16 percent in the second quarter of this year, led by the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions, according to IDC. Shipments were down in the Asia-Pacific region, usually a strong market for growth, but the results were even worse in the U.S., where units shipped grew 3.6 percent, according to IDC. That's the second straight quarter of sluggish growth for the U.S.: Q1 of this year saw 4.6 percent growth.

What we learn from the slowdown in the Asia-Pacific region is that these other international regions are not entirely independent of the U.S. slowdown.

"We haven't seen the impact on international PC shipments yet," said IDC analyst Loren Loverde. "What's remarkable about Asia is we're just starting to see that slower growth."

In the U.S., Dell put a bit more distance between itself and chief rival Hewlett-Packard, though both continued to do well. HP was up 16.8 percent, just slightly ahead of the market overall. Dell grew 12 percent in the second quarter, which is down from the previous two quarters of 15 percent growth each, but it's clear the company is righting the ship. Its retail strategy, now in place for a year, is working, and its stated goal of growing its international business also appears to be on track, said Loverde.

HP continued to lead all PC vendors with 18.9 percent of units shipped worldwide. Dell came in at 16.8 percent, followed by Acer/Gateway at 9.9 percent, Lenovo at 7.9 percent, and Toshiba at 4.4 percent.

Other highlights:

*60 percent of Lenovo's business is done in the Asia Pacific region, and despite that the company still did well, growing shipments at 14.6 percent worldwide.

*Apple tied Acer with 7.8 percent of PCs shipped to the U.S. market, according to IDC.

*Windows lost share to Mac OS yet again.

The U.S. PC market is beginning to have less influence on the global market, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.

Though it had previously projected 7 percent growth for the U.S. market, shipments inched up 3.5 percent, half what IDC was anticipating.

The fascination with low-cost portable PCs, like the Asus Eee PC pictured here, is driving down the cost of PCs everywhere.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)

"The main issue is the economic situation in the U.S.," said Doug Bell, PC analyst for IDC. "It was the only region really impacted by the recession scare." Corporate IT budgets are showing that cautious approach, he noted. Spending on IT hardware is being delayed to the second half of this year or early next year, or at least tightened. Though Microsoft finally released Vista Service Pack 1 this quarter, it had less of an impact than anticipated, but could begin to convince businesses to upgrade next quarter.

The worldwide market is a different story. In the first quarter of 2008, shipments of PCs actually exceeded expectations, growing 14.6 percent to roughly 70 million units. That's two percentage points higher than anticipated.

Increased growth in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) compensated for the U.S. shortcomings, however. Like the U.S., buyers in the region are moving toward more inexpensive portable PCs, particularly in emerging markets where many consumers are making their first PC purchase.

In good news for buyers, the average selling price of PCs is continuing to drop, due to the new market of low-cost PCs, like the Asus Eee PC and Everex Cloudbook. The volume of low-cost PCs shipping is still minimal, but it's growing. "With all major vendors putting resources into low-cost PCs, we're just starting to see a handful of offerings," said Bell. "It's unclear how large that market actually is because we really only have one or two products to base it on."

The world's top 5 PC vendors remained in their same positions (HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba), and all grew faster than the total market. Hewlett-Packard grew 17.4 percent, but that was the lowest growth rate of the top 5. Dell, which is in the midst of a comeback since its disastrous 2007, saw its shipments rise 21.6 percent over last year, while Acer was once again the growth leader at 66 percent. This is the second quarter in which its purchase of Gateway and Packard Bell have counted toward its total shipments, and the combined company's total actually resulted in a 20 percent drop from the same quarter a year ago, which IDC said is due to weaker Gateway-branded products.

It looks like Dell is beginning to get its ducks in a row, as this is the second straight quarter the Texas PC maker has shown positive growth. "To have this kind of growth in the U.S. is a good sign for them. It points to their new retail strategy and overall shift toward portables," said Bell.

As far as market leader HP, its impressive growth of the last year has been tempered slightly by market conditions. "They had such a great 2007, the economy kind of caught up to them. HP is a great example of (what's happened to) the U.S. PC market due to the economy."

Despite some anticipation of weakening U.S. consumer confidence, PC shipment growth here nearly doubled between the third and fourth quarters of 2007, to reach 8.8 percent, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker report released Wednesday.

Dell actually expanded its market share in the fourth quarter, after a string of disappointing quarters while it reshuffled its ranks and its product lineup. Dell used momentum derived from its new retail push to drive its shipments up by more than 15 percent in the quarter--growth far ahead of the rest of the U.S. The Texas PC maker finished the year with 29.6 percent of the total PC market in the U.S. in the fourth quarter, IDC said.

"From a Dell perspective, part of going from minus-5-percent to 15-percent positive (growth) this quarter is the fact that year-ago shipment was pretty low," said Loren Loverde, director of IDC's quarterly PC report. "So some of that is factoring in, but they have also launched a lot of new products, and lot of new (retail) channel arrangements."

Acer also made a big push in retail this year, continuing the rapid gains in the U.S. (it's grown 294 percent since the same quarter a year ago), and appears to have finally nailed down its coveted No. 3 spot in the worldwide ranking of top PC vendors. When combined with Gateway, Acer shipments achieved 9.6 percent share worldwide in Q4, compared with 6.9 percent a year ago.

Though Lenovo has been nipping at its heels, Acer's most direct competition in the U.S. is the two big guys--Hewlett-Packard and Dell. "HP has a lot more experience with consumers and is going to try to defend that turf. It's a pretty dynamic competitive space all around," Loverde said.

HP, the worldwide PC leader for more than a year now, saw its shipments rise both at home and abroad, though it was somewhat affected by stagnating growth in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, according to IDC. It now has 19 percent of the worldwide market.

Lenovo has been going strong for three straight quarters. It ended the year behind Acer with 7.5 percent of worldwide PC shipments. It's not in the top 5 of vendors in the U.S. market, but recently introduced its new IdeaPad consumer notebook line, which the company hopes will follow in the tradition of its business-oriented ThinkPad line of laptops.

Rival analyst firm Gartner ranks the companies in the same order as IDC, according to findings also released Wednesday: the worldwide leader is HP (with 18.2 percent market share), followed by Dell (14.3), Acer (8.9), Lenovo (7.4), and Toshiba (4.0) to round out the top 5.

In the U.S., it's Dell (31.4 percent market share), HP (26.1), Acer (9), Apple (6.1), and Toshiba (5.3). Apple has stretched its share of the U.S. market to 6.1 percent, from 5.1 percent a year ago. Gartner also notes that for the second consecutive quarter mobile PC shipments exceeded those of desktops.

Though the market for computers--and both business and consumer technology across the board--appears healthy, it could drop off next year. But thus far, there are no signs of it in the PC space.

Though there's been ample hand-wringing over interest rates, credit problems, and weak retail sales, the computing industry is staying immune so far, according to Loverde.

"There's some risk of having an impact on PCs, but a certain amount of it is because we just went through the holiday season and Wall Street is under pressure," he said. "If you look at the broader technology trends...some recovery in 2007, commercial Vista adoption, pretty strong portable (PC) adoption, (and) we're still getting lower prices and new users...A number of tech environment factors that suggest we should expect still some pretty solid growth. The risk that we might not maintain double digit growth in the next couple years would be if we had a recession and consumer spending really started to cut back."

Shipments of PCs to the saturated U.S. market may be declining somewhat, but the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa) gave the worldwide PC market a big boost in the third quarter, according to figures released Wednesday by IDC.

PC shipments grew 15.5 percent worldwide in the past quarter. Growth in the EMEA regions, led by Hewlett-Packard and Acer, was paced by a strong demand for notebooks and back-to-school promotions, leading to the best growth rates in the region in the past two years.

"The issue is that it continues to be notebooks that are driving strong growth for the overall market. It's happening on the consumer and enterprise sides," said Bob O'Donnell, IDC vice president for clients and displays. "Consumers increasingly are voting for notebooks."

HP continued to stretch its lead over rival Dell as the No. 1 PC maker in the world. HP's slice of the global PC vendor pie now stands at 19.6 percent, keeping Dell in second place with 15.2 percent. It was exactly a year ago when HP toppled Dell as the top dog of the PC world. Since then, HP's growth has continued apace, while Dell has struggled. But the Round Rock, Texas, PC maker appears to be turning things around.

For one, Dell, which is overrepresented in sales to U.S. customers, is starting to spread its business to a variety of geographic regions, something CEO Michael Dell acknowledged at an investor conference earlier this year.

"Now they're starting to reap some benefits," said O'Donnell. "Call it a turnaround or call it a readjustment, but they're starting to get their ships in order and get things back on track. But they still have a ways to go."

Case in point: Though Dell made some good gains in shipment volume growth in the past year, it was the only of the top five PC vendors to lose worldwide market share from a year ago. After HP and Dell, IDC says the top vendors are Lenovo (8.2 percent), Acer (8.1 percent) and Toshiba (4.4 percent). Rival analyst firm Gartner places Acer (8.1 percent) slightly ahead of Lenovo (8.0 percent) in its rankings.

Acer had made some monstrous gains in quarters past, and though the third quarter was still very healthy--with an industry-leading 60 percent growth in shipments over the last year--its rate of growth shows signs of slowing.

"The volume was down sequentially for Acer. That signifies that they've hit a bit of a wall in terms of U.S. growth," said O'Donnell. "A lot people thought that would happen. It's a different animal in the U.S. where (success is determined by) retail shelf space."

So while Acer continues to grow, nobody in any industry can keep up that type of pace. The addition of Gateway and Packard Bell to its arsenal should provide more opportunities to grow, but the impact of the two acquisitions likely won't be felt for several quarters, O'Donnell said.

Here in the U.S., overall PC shipments grew a scant 5.2 percent since the same quarter last year. Desktop shipments continued to decline, and while notebook shipments did grow, they didn't quite match last quarter's numbers, said IDC.

Dell maintained its lead in the U.S., but HP continues to lurk closely behind. Dell's U.S. share is 28 percent, followed by HP with 24.3, Apple with 6.3, Toshiba with 5.2 and Gateway with 4.8 percent. Gartner's data ranks the vendors the same, but gives Apple an 8.1 percent share and also bumps Gateway up slightly to 5.2 percent.