Lenovo will offer SSDs soon.

[ryengineer]

Matt wrote:

SSDs will take the notebook world by storm. It just won’t be quite as fast as many people think. Our engineers are optimistic that current limitations will be overcome. Data is THE most important part of any notebook and we want to be sure that customers can continue to be satisfied with their ThinkPad investments.

Full story can be found here.

[gator]

This is an excellent post from Matt. Thanks for the heads up, rye!

This part of the post discusses an excellent point(emphasis mine). Unless true SATA SSD drives come out, atleast from a power perspective, regular HDDs will be very competitive.

Solid state HDDs promise to save power compared to traditional hard disk technology. And they will. However today’s generation of SSDs have no power savings benefit compared to traditional HDDs. The big reason is that current SSDs with a Serial ATA interface are actually Parallel ATA hard disk drives with a serial bridge chip. They don’t offer support for low power interface states and the architecture has a potential for data-losing error conditions when recovering from a low power state like suspend or hibernate. In the future, there will be native SATA solutions which will solve many of these problems and will at the same time offer a real power savings benefit which should increase battery life.

Our lab does some work on NAND flash reliability at the device level, and I have read a few papers about this topic ... though we don't test "super" cells, the primary point against NAND flash is its ability to hold data reliably over many read/ write cycles ... but it is getting better and better day-by-day. The speed is obviously improving with every technology node (from 90-->65-->45 nm), but reliabilty is something is very important too! NAND flash drives aren't there yet, but someday soon, we'll see them. - my guess is in maybe 5 years from now, in the thinkpad T100. Any takers?

[Tholek]

The T100 may be the last one to be user-friendly. I hear the T101 will have an Austrian accent and take preemptive action when approached with coffee.

[mattbiernat]

so why is DELL ofering SSD but lenovo isn't?

[SHoTTa35]

well SSDs definitely improved my Windows Vista usage. I have a 16GB SSD and Vista sucks up 9GBs out of it but i'd rather use that and have my regular PATA drive via USB 2.0 enclosure just because it flies so much. This is 7200RPM performance at lower than 4200RPM power.

I have a 5400RPM 120GB that i use sometimes and that gets a 4.5 in Vista but this drive gets a nice 5.3. That's performance you can actually see, it's not just random numbers like some benchmarks. The Hitachi 7k100 drives got like a 5.0 In Vista. Then talk about the "right palm rest" issue. There's no heat! Even that alone is great. Then add the generally cooler running laptop, fan bearly comes on at all. Right now my laptop has no moving parts since i removed the optical drive for a travel bezel and in the night in my room i hear nothing.... nothing i tell ya!

[ryengineer]

so why is DELL ofering SSD but lenovo isn't?

Sir, lenovo is looking forward to but is just waiting for some more improvement to be made in this department.

[Eric Giles]

so why is DELL ofering SSD but lenovo isn't?

Sir, lenovo is looking forward to but is just waiting for some more improvement to be made in this department.

Exactly-I think that for such a change as this, Lenovo will do more engineering research to make absolutely sure the technology lives up to their standards.

[stylinexpat]

Now I am in the market for a nice 64GB SSD. Anyone here know who has a good price on them? Looks like the SSD may be the way to go. No sound, No heat and faster boot times

[Rochefort]

Now I am in the market for a nice 64GB SSD. Anyone here know who has a good price on them? Looks like the SSD may be the way to go. No sound, No heat and faster boot times................

.........and more reliable !??
I'm waiting for one too

[K. Eng]

I can understand Lenovo waiting for SSD technology to improve. I'd like to see a native SATA SSD as well. Current SSD power savings don't seem all that great from what I have read on AnandTech.

[Rochefort]

I can understand Lenovo waiting for SSD technology to improve. I'd like to see a native SATA SSD as well. Current SSD power savings don't seem all that great from what I have read on AnandTech.

May be , in the next months, could we see SSD drives able to improve my PATA T 42p specs in order to keep it à few time more !?
I like it so much

[Rochefort]

A 128 GB Super Talent SATA SSD review HERE

[stylinexpat]

A 128 GB Super Talent SATA SSD review HERE

A bit on the thick side. Am sure they will release some thinner ones some time soon. This one is just too thick. I would say another 2-3 months and some nice ones will be hitting the market.

[Rochefort]

We've to wait for 2008
May be , we can see new N-books with thicker HD bays to put SSD in RAID

[snife]

so why is DELL ofering SSD but lenovo isn't?

Because Dell aren't a technology company, they are a delivery company, their whole setup is geared towards sales so its easy for them to offer new options sooner, but I would personally be concerned about the amount of testing that is done on them.

[Rochefort]

A 128 GB Super Talent SATA SSD review HERE

A bit on the thick side. Am sure they will release some thinner ones some time soon. This one is just too thick. I would say another 2-3 months and some nice ones will be hitting the market.

All the technews speak about SSD everywhere but there's none on the shelves !
I'm waiting for a speedy PATA SSD (16 or 32 Gb)

[ducky2802]

I just saw http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/battleship/ review on engadget for raid 0 on 9 mtron ssd's! I checked the prices on mtron's lower performance units (still in the 0.1ms access time, 100mb read, 80mb write, which seems loads faster than my seagate) and prices dont seem too bad... $400 for 16gb. Toss your primary hdd into an ultrabay and you can get what seem to be a pretty fast (and quiet) thinkpad. But, would the T60's chipset support these speeds? I was reading up on intel's southbridge technology not performing well with the ssd, and Im not sure which ons is in my T60.

[jlingo]

Yes I'm so curious with Mtron SSD as well, looking very appealing. I would be nice to get the awesome performance! Anybody has used Mtron SSD? I'm interested with 32GB Mobi SSD.

[lightweight]

From http://preview.tinyurl.com/2p55ny, emphasis added

IdeaPad U110
Ultraportable widescreen
Extremely thin and light – perfect for people on-the-go.

* 11.1’’ widescreen display
* VeriFace face recognition security
* Dolby® Home Theater™ audio
* Solid state hard drive (optional)

Keep me informed

Available March 2008

[Trekk69]

Interesting to see the pricing option on the (optional) SSD for the Ideapads