Toshiba first with half-a-terabyte SSD laptop
512 solid-state gigabytes on board and ready to buy now
Toshiba has begun selling what it claims is the first notebook to come with a 512GB solid-state drive as standard.
You'll have to live in Japan - or know someone there - to get your mitts on the Dynabook SS RX2 WAJ, but if you manage it you not only get the aforementioned SSD but also a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 processor, 3GB of 667MHz DDR 2 memory, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, Gigabit Ethernet and all the usual trimmings.
Toshiba's Dynabook SS RX2 WAJ: 512GB SSD on board
The display is a 12.1in 1280 x 800 job driven by the Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics core built into the machine's chipset.
The 1.1kg laptop uses the same casing as Toshiba's Portégé R600 - reviewed here - but the company claimed the new model will run for up to 12 hours on a single charge of its battery. That's rather more than the R600 can manage.
Back to the SSD: it's a multi-layer cell job that Toshiba claimed has a sustained write speed of 180MB/s and a sustained read speed of 230MB/s. So it's no slouch as SSDs go.
The laptop's available today for ¥398,000 (£2755/$4172/€3065) or ¥423,000 (£2928/$4434/€3258) if you want Microsoft Office as well as Vista. ®
COMMENTS
£3k!
Good grief - three thousand pounds! That's 15 Acer Aspire Ones. It's even more than twice what I paid for my MacBook Pro - that's absolutely ridiculous.
It had better be very very good.
I really can't wait for SSDs to become more affordable
(them coming cheaper or me becoming richer, I'm easy either way). Have a look on Youtube for videos of just how insanely fast applications can launch from an SSD. And that includes the OS
@AC
I think that calling for the demise of 'rotating disks' is a bit premature.
SSDs still have their flaws. I guess if you can afford a $4,000 laptop, you could also afford to have an external raid of SSDs sitting on your desk top 'docking station' so you can back up your laptop's important data.
Several months ago HP announced a new storage technology that they were able to create within their labs. a memristor...
http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2008/apr-jun/memristor.html
I did a quick google and found it.
If HP can bring this technology to the market, then you have a game changer.
But that technology is still a long way off. (Unfortunately)
Nearly choked on my elevenses...
How Much!!?? Think I'll wait for the price to drop a bit...
Want!
I've always thought that rotating disks in laptops are a bit of a restriction. I wonder when we'll reach the tipping point where SSD becomes the norm? Prices will need to come down a way first, of course.
Paris, because she knows all about the advantages of added silicon. Allegedly.
