Are Consumer Hard Drives Headed Into History?

Lucas123 writes "With NAND flash fabricators ramping up production, per GB prices of solid state drives are expected to drop by more than half by this time next year to about 50 cents. Even so, consumers still look at three things when purchasing a computer: CPU power, memory size, and drive capacity, giving spinning disk the edge. SSD manufacturers like Samsung and SanDisk have tried but failed to change consumer attitudes toward choosing SSDs for their performance, durability and lower power use. But, with the release of the new MacBook Air (sans hard disk drive), Steve Jobs has joined the marketing push and may have the clout to shift the market away from hard drives, even if they're still an order of magnitude cheaper."

Comments

Steve Jobs has clout

[Anonymous Coward]

He has enough clout to push about 8% of consumers to buy overpriced hardware.

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[hairyfeet]

Actually I'd say those numbers are probably declining except for the diehard Mac users. Why do I say that? Because I live next to a college that traditionally has been HEAVY Mac territory. in fact just 5 years ago I bet I could have counted the non Macs I'd see when I walked upon campus with one hand. What is it now, and as far as the eye can see? Netbooks. Nothing but small thin light easy to carry and cheap netbooks as far as the eye can see. While Steve has usually been good at getting ahead of the curve with consumers I think he missed the boat with this one, as the most popular models I'm seeing, and this is on a campus with a LOT of old and new money, and can certainly afford MBA if they want, is the 7-10 inch mini netbooks. Talking to the kids, which since my oldest is now attending I get to quite often, is the size and weight makes them just too handy for classes, and more and more the average folks are jumping on as well. You'd be surprised how many times I've seen women pull out mini-netbooks while waiting in some office somewhere.

So while I wish old Steve nothing but luck and give him credit for taking a company the Pepsi guy had all but killed and bringing them back from the dead, I really think the Macs are gonna be shrinking and going back to what they were pre-hype, which is a tool for graphics designers. i just don't see the wealthy carrying them anymore. Old Steve don't have to worry though, because the iPhone will more than make up for that, but the days of hipsters carrying around Macbooks seems to be ending. Now all I see is mini-netbooks with custom graphics covers everywhere.

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[Ethanol-fueled]

The reason there's resistance to SSDs is that they're JUST TOO EXPENSIVE.

I'm still waiting on the long-term failure data. The takes-years-to-collect-real-life data, not the "how many read-write cycles in a laboratory" data.

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[MudflapSoftware]

My experience differs. My employer does on-campus interviews at around 50 schools nationwide, and over 70% of the potential recruits were equipped with macs.... according to the web logs from a site they were required to visit individually.... Our public web site has seen a marked increase in 'mac' traffic as well.... averaging around 10%, up from 3% a couple of years ago.

Re:Disk life and data permanence

[Dravik]

When SSDs fail, they are still readable. So the friend of a friend's uncle wont lose his entire porn collection (life's work). He just won't be able to save that new clip he downloaded.