If you have a notebook, chances are that you’ll still be using a 2.5” hard drive. Seldom would you find a notebook with a 2.5” SSD drive, and even rarer would it have a 1.8” SSD drive. Some of the newer ultra-light notebooks and UMPCs would use 1.8” drives, but they wouldn’t be the norm as yet.
With Samsung’s announcement that they have begun mass producing their 1.8” form 64GB SSD drives, it might signal that that might soon change. Growing use of SSDs in notebooks sure looks like a certainty in the future, but with smaller SSDs becoming available in the market, other mobile consumer gadgets will also be able to make use of these. As gadgets get smaller and smaller, with a demand for increased capacity, it only seems logical that smaller form factor drives become a necessity; and with regular hard drives limited by the mechanical moving parts in them, these small form factor SSDs become very handy for such purposes.
As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of SSDs, Samsung’s market reach and position has a great influence on how successful these drives will be. Right now, one of the main barriers of SSDs succeeding is their price; they are still considerably more expensive than traditional hard drives. Mass production of SSDs and more and more companies adopting them to instill in gadgets will hopefully drive prices down enough so it can easily compete with regular hard drives.
Via [Samsung]
6G iPod anyone? That's the real market for 1.8" drives, isn't it? Base notebooks seem to have cracked the 100GB threshold, so this is a little behind the curve. Though the power requirements could mean your 15" LED/SDD MacBook Pro batteries might run up to 8 hours.