$125 Solid State Drive No Great Price Break-through

Preview of a new $125 40GB solid state drive that Intel claims is more 'affordable' than earlier SSD products. But the author notes that the price per gigabyte is no lower and performance not as good.

"On the heels of OCZ Technology Group Inc.'s release of its first sub-$100 solid-state drive (SSD), Intel Corp. said today that it is shipping a $125 SSD called the X25-V Value SATA SSD.

Affordable is the word Intel wants associated with this drive, but the price per gigabyte is the same as that of its higher-capacity consumer SSDs. The new drive simply offers less storage space and lower performance for a lower price. But industry analysts said the trend of offering lower-capacity SSDs for around $100 may spur adoption of nonvolatile memory in what has been a somewhat flat market over the past year."