The biggest obstacle to mainstreaming SSD's has been price per gigabyte and overall cost of individual SSD's. Leave it to Kingston to break the price barrier and deliver a 40GB Kingston SSDNow for a measly $115 (Before MIR). Not only are they delivering a $115 SSD, they are delivering an Intel controller and Intel Nand flash SSD.

You can reach up and close your mouth now, yes it's a $115 SSD with an Intel controller and Nand flash in it. Not only that, it's also not the old 45nm SSD rehashed for Kingston, it's the new 34nm design with a totally new Intel controller that offers marginally better performance than the uber expensive (at launch) Intel X25-M. At launch the Intel X25-M was running in the $600 - $800 range for an 80GB MLC SSD. Short months later you can get a better drive, with 40GB capacity for $115, take the $115 times two and you get the same capacity for $230 pre MIR, after MIR (At Launch) the total cost for 80GB would run a measly $170.

Maybe it's time to change the way we think about SSD's and have a Kingston SSDNow V 40GB boot drive and a secondary platter drive for storage and large programs. All the speed and benefits of an SSD and plenty of inexpensive storage on the backup platter drive.



Link: Bjorn3D