Neowin.net

SanDisk have announced that they are launching a new range of Solid State Drives (SSDs) designed specifically for netbooks. The SanDisk pSSD-P2 and SanDisk pSSD-S2 SSDs, expected in February this year, will be available in capacities of 8, 16, 32 and 64GB – which, with the latter two, would allow for a full installation of Windows Vista (or any large operating system for that matter), something not possible on netbooks with smaller capacity SSDs.

The new range is said to have improved performance for netbooks, at a lower cost. Unlike the previous range of netbook SSDs, the new range is to feature a SATA interface, following a change in design requirements. "Netbooks represent the fastest growing PC segment in 2009 and 2010 yet widespread adoption of SSDs in netbooks has been limited by speed, capacity and cost constraints," said SanDisk.

The drives will use 43-nanometer Multi-Level Cell (MLC) technology as opposed to Single-Level Cell (SLC) technology, which has better performance but at a higher production cost. However, this is good news for SSD technology, which until recently hasn't been embraced, due to the high cost and some performance issues.

Although no price or performance details were released, SanDisk hinted at cheaper prices – how much cheaper - and in reference to what - we don't know. But at the very least, this shows that, with time and advances in production techniques, the Solid State Drive is coming ever-closer to where tradition hard disk drives are.