Panasonic has announced its W8 Premium Edition laptop. These are tough laptops that sport an 80GB Intel X-25M SSD with 250MB/sec reading speed and 70MB/sec writing speed.

The notebook comes in three different lid cover flavors including Black, Silver and Pink Splash. No info on pricing or availability just yet. Panasonic simply wanted you to notice them.

It wasn’t so long ago that adding a SSD to your computer meant $1000 or more in additional costs. Buying a SSD to add as an upgrade was only marginally cheaper with even small capacity SSDs selling in the $800 range.

SSD prices are coming down quickly in part thanks to the technology getting cheaper and in part due to the poor global economy putting price pressure on manufacturers. Intel’s X25-M SSD can now be had on Newegg.com for under $370.

I have a Dell XPS M1330 and when I ordered my laptop you could get a small 64GB SSD for around $1000 if memory serves. Like all things tech, as time goes by prices get cheaper and that holds true for the new SSD options Dell has on two of its notebooks.

Shoppers interested in the Dell XPS M1330 or XPS M1730 can add the new Samsung 256GB SSD to the notebooks at a bargain price (for a SSD anyway). The drive in question is the new MLC Samsung 256GB SSD.

Epson isn’t just about printers, though we tend to associate the name with printers. They make lots of other stuff too. Epson Japan has announced it’s latest Business to Business laptop dubbed the Endeavor NA802.

The 13.3 inch WXGA notebook comes packed with a Core 2 Duo P8400 processor, an nVidia GeForce 9600M GT with 256MB of VRAM, 1GB to 4GB of RAM, and a wide range of 5400 or 7200rpm HDDs or a 128GB (MLC) SSD drive. The new Endeavor NA802 also features a WiFiLink 5300AGN module with Windows Vista or XP Pro OS. No word on pricing or availability.

There are a few common threads in the SSD market no matter the maker of the device. These threads include price premiums and better performance. For some markets, the high price of SSDs has kept them from being popular despite the performance benefits.

RunCore has announced a new line of SSDs that are 1.8-inch PATA drop in replacements for many portable notebooks that use standard 1.8-inch HDDs. The SSDs come in 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities retailing for $69.99, $119.99, $199.99, and $389.99 respectively.

The SSD is slowly becoming more and more of a match for the traditional HDD. One of the key complaints about SSDs compared to a traditional HDD is that of storage capacity. One of the other key complaints is price, the typical SSD costs much more than a comparable HDD.

Toshiba has announced its latest SSD line that includes the industry’s first 512GB SSD. That much storage capacity puts the SSD up there with some of the largest traditional HDDs aimed at notebook users. The 2.5-inch 512GB SSD is built using Toshiba’s 43nm NAND technology.

Intel and Micron’s joint venture in NAND flash technology, IM Flash Technologies, has announced mass production of 34nm, 32 gigabit multi-level cell NAND Flash device. This move puts the company in the lead of Flash technology ahead of the likes of Samsung and Toshiba with the only monolithic 32 Gb NAND chip that fits into a standard 48-lead thin small-outline package (TSOP).

The companies stated in the announcement that the development of the technology process is going along well and is actually ahead of schedule with the ability to provide companies to create greater capacities of NAND Flash memory for devices like cameras, phones, media players and computers at a lower production cost than what is currently available.

We had heard talk about Samsung’s 256GB solid state drive back in May and it appears that today the talk has finally come true. Samsung has announced they are now officially manufacturing the large Flash-based drive, and we can tell you it’s fast. What we can’t tell you yet is how much it costs.

The speed of the 256GB drive is double that of Samsung’s 64GB and 128GB drives in what Samsung is calling “…disruptive performance”, with sequential read rates of 220MB/s and write rates of 200 MB/s. Applications can launch as much as 10 times faster than a 7200rpm notebook HDD with speeds that would be similar to a 15,000rpm drive.

I have talked about the drawbacks of SSDs before, including the high price of the typical SSD and the lower storage capacity among others. The price for your average SSD is starting to come down and new technology is bringing us higher capacities and better performance. Toshiba introduce a new SSD this week that helps performance and capacity concerns.

The Toshiba 256GB SSD uses multi-level cell technology for faster performance. The 256GB drive uses the industry standard 2.5-inch form factor. MLC technology allows the SSD to have read speeds of 120Mbps and write speeds of 70Mbps.

The SSD offers some nice benefits to the notebook users like increased battery life, faster boot times, and quieter operation. The catch is that at this time SSDs are significantly more expensive than comparable hard drives and the storage capacity of the typical SSD is low.

Intel has jumped into the SSD market with the introduction of a pair of SSDs aimed at consumers. The new SSDs include the X18-M and the X25-M. The X18-M is a 1.8-inch drive and the X25-M is a more traditional 2.5-inch size drive. Intel says that the improved performance of the SSD helps reduce bottlenecks between its CPUs and the storage system. This is the SSD used in the HP system claiming 24-hours of runtime.

Micron is a big name in the flash memory and storage world. It announced a pair of new solid state drives (SSDs) today called the RealSSD P200 and the RealSSD C200. The two drives are aimed at distinctly different markets and use different technologies.

The RealSSD P200 has the performance, power, and reliability that are needed in the enterprise environment. The P200 uses Micron single-level cell NAND technology and uses a 2.5-inch form factor. Storage capacity for the P200 line ranges from 16GB to 128GB and the drives use the 3Gb/s SATA interface. Maximum read and write speed for the P200 line is 250MB/s. The P200 SSDs are good for up to 2 million hours mean time between failure.

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.