OCZ recently unveiled their latest range of Solid State Drives (SSD), aiming to hit the balance between cost and performance. With only a few exceptions, SSDs haven"t received a warm welcome from consumers yet - almost certainly due to the cost, as the price per gigabyte is considerably higher than that for traditional hard drives.
Only a small handful of major technology companies have entered this new, emerging market, and perhaps for a good reason. However, the new drives could be the start of a push to lower prices without lowering performance drastically either. The new range, available in capacities of 30GB, 60GB, 120GB and 250GB is a mixture of good performance (in comparison to existing SSDs, as well as their own range) and value. With read speeds of up to 200MB a second, and write speeds of 160MB, very few SSDs beat it in terms of performance, and fewer still regarding cost.
OCZ"s recommended prices for the 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB models are USD $129, $249, $469, and $869 respectively - not enough to tempt those with lower budgets, but, in comparison to Intel"s SSD offerings (which have faster read speeds, but slower write speeds), it offers better value for money.
Of course, the latest range from OCZ has the standard features one would expect from an SSD drive too, but the focus is on value for money. Adoption of the new drives has only just taken off in laptops in the last year, and is likely to take longer for PCs. However, regardless of the slow adoption, this is surely a step in the right direction for what could be, and is likely to be the replacement for the traditional hard drive.