SanDisk's new pSSD is a pATA drive aimed at the low-cost notebook PC sector— that range of ULPCs, MIDs and the like. Using Multi-Level Cell and Single-Level flash chip designs, the pSSD will have a read speed of about 39MB/sec and a streaming write speed of about 17MB/sec. Though there's no pricing info available, they'll be released at the beginning of August in 8, 16 and 32 GB capacities. Read on for the full press release.

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While it's possible to install standalone solid state hard drives into most any laptop, it's always nice to see services selling preconfigured packages. Right now a company named ExperCom is offering both MacBooks and MacBook Pros with SSDs installed out of the box. And their prices are actually pretty reasonable.

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So far, Intel has been lackadaisical in supporting solid state drives, just toying with the market a bit. But according to DigiTimes, Intel will soon be introducing new SSD drives with the Centrino 2 platform as a standard—2.5-inch and 1.8-inch SATA drives with 80GB of storage. In 2009, Intel plans on expanding capacities all the way up to 250GB. That's still a hefty amount of space for standard laptop drives. No word on pricing at the moment, but we're guessing they'll be the most expensive "Centrinos" ever. To see Intel's pitch on SSD, hit the jump.

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Ah, the Asus Eee PC, the little computer that can be modded to do anything, from stealing all your money in an ATM to grabbing all your money on the internet. This one will snatch $3,200 from your account if you want to buy it on eBay, with all the mods except for the 3G card: a 32GB Patriot XT solid state drive (in addition to the included 8GB), a touchscreen and a bunch of other things, an Air Play card to transmit all your sound to any FM radio. Complete specs after the jump.

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While both Intel and Samsung are promising big drops in SSD prices by the year's end for now they still cost plenty. Unless you want to take the DIY route, and use this nifty gizmo from Century which uses compact flash cards for storage. The new version now accepts CF 3x cards and can create drives between 2GB and a crazy (and impossible, for now) 2TB in size. So you could buy a pair of 32GB CF cards for around US$270, add in US$192.57 for the DIY drive and you'd have a 64GB SATA SSD for about US$460— less than half the cost of the 64GB MacBook Air's drive. Not bad, eh? Available from May 1st. [GeekStuff4U via Akihabaranews]

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The whole reason to pay the obscene premium for a SSD is because it's supposed to be way more reliable than your average spinny hard drive. According to an analyst at Avian Securities, however, an unnamed "large computer manufacturer" is having 10 to 20 percent of its flash-based notebooks sent back because of technical failure—and still more are being sent back for not matching purchasers' expectations for a total of 20 to 30 percent of SSD-based notebooks getting the heave-ho.

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Toshiba's Dynabook SS RX1 now has an optional 128GB solid state drive built in, which Toshiba is claiming as a world first. It certainly beats the MacBook Air's SSD option, and is similarly slender, plus it squeezes in an optical drive. It has a 1.2 GHz Core 2 Duo, Intel graphics and a 12.1-inch 1280 x 800 pixel screen, and a claimed battery life of 12.5 hours, which seems huge. It's also configurable without the SSD but with an 80GB hard drive and a CDMA card for mobile internet goodness. Available from April in Japan at first, for around US$4,000. [Ascii]

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We already told you about Intel's new ultramobile SSDs, but their tiny size means high cost and low capacities, only up to 16GB. That's why the company promised SATA-II SSDs in the 1.8" and 2.5" sizes with capacities up to 160GB, with read and write speeds exceeding Samsung's 100MB/s and 70MB/s, respectively. Best of all, Intel says its goal is to drive down the currently exorbitant prices of solid-state storage to something less punitive, predicting two subsequent 50% drops in 2009 and 2010. [Daily Tech]

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I told you SSDs would be plummeting in price this year, and here's Samsung coming along making me look like some sort of genius for finding an article that said that and then writing about it. I rule! Anyhow, Samsung is looking to double the size of its SSDs not once this year, but twice, ending up with a 256GB SSD by year's end.

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Now that the war is over, you may be wondering what the future will hold for Toshiba. You may not, too, but yesterday at the local press event for HD DVD's demise, Toshiba's Australian General Manager Mark Whittard dropped some pretty big hints as to which direction Toshiba will be looking to move post-HD DVD. And as you could imagine, it isn't Blu-ray.

He cited that one of the major influences in Toshiba's decision to pull the plug, outside of Warner and Walmart's decision to turn their backs on the format, was the rapidly growing demand for downloadable entertainment. The market for online content was growing faster than Toshiba had expected, and had severely reduced the lifespan of both next-gen disc formats.

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