Laptop makers using more solid state disks

For the average computer user, there's just one computer hardware component that can make a huge difference in how fast and snappy a computer feels. While a processor upgrade or more RAM are unlikely to offer the expected impact on a bang-for-bucks basis, an upgrade to a solid state disk is typically a magical experience. Sadly, a lot of computer vendors are still shipping systems with slow hard disk drives.

A new DigiTimes report mentions laptop makers are boosting SSD adoption for new models. The adoption rate of SSDs is expected to climb to 55 percent. Additionally, laptops will also be getting more capacity. While 128GB SSDs are still today's mainstream, this is expected to climb to 256GB or even higher.

The small size and strong shock-resistance of SSD are quite appealing to portable notebooks, and vendors are expected to gradually boost the SSD adoption ratio for their models to over 55% by leveraging SSD price declines. And the mainstream SSD storage spec adopted is also being upgraded from 128GB to 256GB, or even toward 512GB and 1TB.

Also worth mentioning is that Intel is reportedly planning to kick off mass production of QLC-based SSDs later this quarter:

Industry sources said that Intel is reportedly to start volume production of QLC (quad-level cell) SSDs that involve larger storage capacity and lower cost in the second quarter of 2018. This is expected to further inspire notebook vendors to adopt large-capacity SSDs.