Solid State Drives may well be the future of data storage in the computer industry, but with the high price of flash memory at this time SSDs are not seeing much adaption in the consumer market. So poor is the uptake by consumers for SSDs that Seagate will not even target the consumer market with its SSD line launching in 2009.

Somehow OCZ has got around the cost issue normally associated with SSDs with its latest offering called the Core Series SATA II Solid State Drive. OCZ says that the Core series are the first truly affordable SSDs and that the retail price of 50% less than competing products on the market.

Today the common speed that SSDs operate at is 130MB/s for read and 120MB/s for write speed. This is significantly faster than traditional hard drives can match, even when spinning at 10000 RPM. Eventually the SSD will replace the traditional hard drive, but right now the hard drive still reigns supreme.

Mtron has announced a new controller technology for SSDs that will make the SSD even more appealing to enterprise customers. The new controller tech uses 8-channels rather than the 4 used today. Mtron says the new controller technology will allow for read speeds of 260MB/s and write speeds of 240MB/s. Drives based on the new controller technology are expected in early 2009.

Toshiba said with pride today it is launching the world’s first laptop with a 128GB solid state drive. It is called the Toshiba Portégé R500-S5007V and you’ll find it pricing around $3,000.

The Toshiba Portégé R500-S5007V, besides sporting a 128GB solid state drive, also comes equipped with a DVD SuperMulti drive. These two small form factor build-ins allow this laptop to be 0.77-inches thin and around 2.4 pounds. The R500-s5007V’s screen is a 12.1-inch backlit widescreen with transreflective LED.

Samsung has announced the world’s fastest MLC-based 256GB SATA solid state drive which boasts some amazingly fast read speeds of 200 mps and 160 mps write speeds. It’s also the thinnest and largest capacity drive with a SATA II interface. Salivating yet?

It measures just 9.5mm thick. No pricing info is available yet, but expect it to be expensive. Should you be able to afford one, they’ll be available this September, with a 1.8-inch version coming in Q4.

SSDs promise to give computer users faster data access, faster boot times, better power consumption and more. The catch is that to get all the benefits of a SSD you have to be willing to spend lots more money compared to a traditional HDD and give up significantly on storage space.

Super Talent has a new video of a demonstration it did to show exactly how well its SSD is able to stand up to vibration. One of the MasterDrive 120GB SSDs that retails for about $670 was strapped to a paint shaker and shook around like crazy.

I am still patiently waiting for the day when NAND flash gets cheap enough that we can stop using normal hard drives and go for SSD drives in our notebooks. I could certainly use all of the battery life I can get and faster boot speeds are great too.

Super Talent announced a new line of SSD drives today that are direct replacements for normal 2.5-inch hard drives and use the SATA-II interface. The drives are called MasterDrive SSD and use a proprietary algorithm to extend the life of the drives.

Sure SSD drives sound cool in theory with the promise of faster boot times and faster data access while being more shock resistant and dead silent. However, the high price of the typical SSD drive and the small storage space compared to typical normal hard drives makes the SSD pill hard to swallow for most.

Super Talent has announced a new SSD that it claims to be the world’s thinnest SSD drive. Sorry, but I hardly think making the drive thinner will get mortal geeks to pony up the extra loot. Since Super Talent is mostly looking at OEM suppliers for the drive, perhaps it will pop up in the next generation of super thin notebooks similar to the MacBook Air.

Most geeks can understand the allure of a SSD drive with much faster data access, read and write speeds. What most geeks can’t get behind is the huge price premium you pay for the SSD when compared to a traditional hard drive and the amount of storage space you give up.

Today a typical hard drives in a computer are at least 80GB, even in tiny ultra portable systems. If you opt for a SSD you typically get 32MB, though some larger SSD drives are available like the 832 GB BiTMICRO SSD from CES 2008.

Samsung is trying to dispel some concerns consumers are having about using flash-based solid-state drives in their computers, saying they are more reliable that a lot of people think. Sure, having a 64GB SSD in your notebook at first sounds like a pretty good idea. Faster boot times, no moving parts to wear out, but then the price hits you. Adding that SSD can increase the overall price of the computer by as much as $900. Also, in terms of computing, a maximum 100,000 write cycles just doesn’t seem like that much.

Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung, is assuring us that 100,000 write cycles is actually quite a bit. He states that the SSD can write 100,000 times to each and every memory cell, and the drive controller evens out the cells that get written to with “wear leveling”. As an example, Yang says that a 64GB SSD could be fully erased and filled again with data every hour and it would still last years before failing. He also said the failure would then likely come from the controller, not the memory cells. He also expects the price of SSDs to drop around 40 percent each year, making this alternative more affordable.