Korean Times: Samsung Rushes to Introduce Flash-Driven Laptops to Market

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Now this looks like progress. A 32GB solid state drive (SSD) is a not only becoming a reality in an computer, but in an Ultra Mobile PC! Not sure what this will do to battery life, but it will certainly affect the speed of the Samsung Q1. It is advances like these which will get us closer to the stated UMPC goals which we first saw at the Microsoft Mobile Products Briefing at the beginning of this year. According to the Korean Times:

“Samsung Electronics twice surprised the computer industry Tuesday, first by announcing that it will be the first firm in the world to sell flash memory-driven laptop computers next month, and then by revealing the sky-high price tags of the products. The two new laptop models will carry a 32-gigabyte flash memory as their main storage device, dubbed as solid-state drive (SSD), instead of the conventional hard disk drive. The next-generation drive reads data three times faster and writes data 1.5 times faster than hard disks. It also consumes less power and makes no noise while operating, making it an ideal device for portable PCs …..”.

Unfortunately, the current price levels will not be helped by this technology:

“…. the much-hyped Ultra Mobile PC, will cost 2.3 million won (app $2,400) with an SSD, while the regular model is currently sold for less than 1.3 million won. The company said the SSD alone causes a 600,000 won (app $630)increase in the manufacturing cost and the new laptops have other additional features, which are not available in the basic models….”

Other encouraging news, a “Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD):

“To bridge the gap between SDD and hard disk drives, Samsung has introduced a hybrid as well – the Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD), which is being shown at a Microsoft conference in Seattle this week. So far, the hybrid hard drive is also outperforming the flash memory-only drive in terms of processing speed, Samsung’s Lee said.”

Alas, it looks like this will only be available for a while in Korea, to minimize early adopter pains, but I personally look forward one day to my UMPC with a SSD or HHD (I love it when I can use new acronyms!).

(thanks to Mel Buckpitt for this tip!)