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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: etchmeister who wrote (19095)	5/24/2006 3:39:36 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25522

Samsung notebooks herald end of hard drive ITWire ^ \| Wednesday, 24 May 2006 \| Stan Beer PC and flash memory manufacturer, Samsung Electronics plans to release two notebook PCs within weeks that will use flash memory instead of hard drives as storage. Each model will have 32 Gbytes of flash storage, comparable to the capacity of magnetic disk based hard drives, but with much lower power consumption. The notebooks, the Samsung Q1 and Q30, will be relatively expensive at US$2,430 and US$3,700 and, for reasons of its own, Samsung has initially decided to make them available only in its home base of Korea. However, there is no doubt that the Japanese and US markets are ripe for this type of technoloy and it will eventually be on the market. Flash has been touted as a possible replacement of hard drive technology for years but the issues of cost and read-write lifespan have been inhibitors. Magnetic drives are cheaper and can currently pack more storage per dollar but, because they involve moving parts, they consumer more power, are noiser and slower to access data. The new Samsung notebooks are relatively modest lowly configured PCs with small low resolution screens, which is why at their premium prices they probably why they won't be marketed in the sophisticated consumer markets of the US and Japan. However, with the concept demonstrated in the commercial marketplace, consumer demand for diskless notebook PCs could well be on the rise and prices will drop. New vertical drive technology, which enables up to 750 Gbytes of data to be stored on a single disk, will keep the magnetic disk around for a while yet. However, a few years ago the concept of having 32 Gbytes of flash storage at an affordable price seemed beyond the realm of possibility. With no moving parts, lower power consumption and superior performance, eventually solid state storage will replace magnetic disks, at least in portable devices. It's just a matter of when.