Small problem

So you bought yourself a shiny new Intel SSD. It’s super fast and you really like it. Then one day you disabled the drive password and POOF. Your data’s been all corrupted. Whoops! Hehe, Intel forgot to tell you about that small bug in the firmware. You know, the one that corrupts your data? Fear not, Intel has come out with a fix. Just download it and your drive is as good as new. Your data … not so much. Oh well. That will teach you to disable the hard drive password.

Intel Atom hits 2Ghz

Just my luck. Pick up a Dell Mini 9 and Intel comes out with 2Ghz Atom processors. Faster, smaller, efficient processors. Now it’s a race between VIA nano and Intel Atom. Who’s going to top the benchmarks and sway consumers to buy their products. Most likely you’ll be seeing these processors in cell phones in 6 months. Full blown Windows platform (or perhaps even a Google platform?) ultra mobile net pc in a cell phone package. Sliding 3″ screen with touch screen interface and keyboard. Forget netbooks. Who’s going to make the computing capable cell phone with usability.

Intel SSD’s fastest ever

So it’s official now. Intel’s SSD’s are the fastest ever! Placed in a RAID 0 with an nVidia RAID controller topped out at 396MB/s read and 130MB/s write. Although at $600 for an 80GB nobody is rushing out to buy them, just yet. Perhaps there’s an enterprise level company waiting to try an SSD server setup out there somewhere. It would be interesting to see what the long term viability would be for something like this. Can SSD’s survive heavy use in the long run?

Seagate SSD’s coming in 2009

So it’s finally happening. Perhaps Seagate saw the writing on the wall once Intel started shipping SSD’s last month. It was hard to believe that the largest hard drive manufacturer had managed to resist market demands for so long. Perhaps you believe Rich Vignes when he says they are focused on perfecting the technology or maybe they are just stalling while the rush a product to market. The lawsuit against STEC was probably enough of a threat to get current SSD manufacturers to look over their existing patents, hopefully they are in the clear. Anybody else selling SSD’s need to push sales and hope that they can gain enough market share to sustain sales going forward. Because when 2009 hits, everybody’s gonna be buying Seagate SSD’s.

I’m guessing Western Digital will be announcing “baby raptor” SSD to debut in 2009 as well.

Kingston to make SSD’s too

Kingston plans to resell drives made by Intel, which makes flash memory chips. Kingston is set to provide technical support, testing and sell the drives to the likes of Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc., IBM Corp. and others.

Intel makes two flash drive models-one that goes into business laptops and another for servers on corporate networks.

The drives are set to ship in the fourth quarter, Leong said.

Kingston has a long history with Intel.

“We have had both an engineering and marketing relationship with Intel for more than a decade,” Leong said. “We work together because we are all part of the same ecosystem.”

Kingston’s main business is buying memory chips and assembling them onto circuit boards that boost the performance of computers. It also makes memory cards that store photos, songs and data on consumer electronics. (link)