SSDs Have Yet to Justify Their Premium Price

Sure, the technology is very promising and the idea is great: no moving parts, near-instant random access times, shock-resistant… it’s all good but, in reality SSD drives aren’t so appealing and it’s hard to see why one would pay a boatload more money when their mechanical counterpart is so cheap and when measurable benefits, if any, are paper-thin. Last week, Tom’s Hardware claimed to have proven that SSDs are worse than classic drives when it comes to power and speed. This week, Laptop Mag claims that they are (just a little) better for battery life… by about 15 minutes (when web surfing, which might be a questionable test). The bottom line is: don’t listen to the hype and wait until SSDs have a proven value. Right now, all they do is bump the gross margins of the companies who build, sell or integrate them in laptops.