Seagate has decided to enter the solid-state disk (SSD) market in 2009, starting the company's switch from hard disk drives (HDD). Their first target: corporate America. Once they've got the cubicle commanders, they'll move to consumers. Seagate senior manager Rich Vignes seems to be awfully defensive about this move, stating over and over that they'll take it slow. Of course, if you're reading Giz, chances are your response to the announcement is "Duh." To be clear, Seagate isn't abandoning HDDs: there will still be segments of the market better suited for hard drives rather than SSDs, and this switch to SSD as the breadwinner of the company won't happen for a long time. [CNet]

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Asustek executive Samson Hu has confirmed his company's plans to release a touchscreen Eee PC variant for sale by Q1 of 2009. It's not known whether the devices will look like the touch panel Eee mods that have been floating around or take the shape of a tablet, but we'll see in January when the first models are shown at CES. That's not all though — further announcements indicated that the Eee line is changing is some more subtle ways.

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Super Talent launched a special series of mini PCIe SSDs for the ASUS Eee PC in 16, 32 and 64 GB sizes, meant to complement the 20 GB HDD found in some of the higher end models. The drives read at 40 mbps, write at 10 mbps and come in NAND MLC or NAND SLC configurations. The drives are expected to ship in November and will cost around $US55, $US80 and $US150 for the 16, 32 and 64 GB drives, respectively. [Super Talent via Electronista]

It's been a while since an Asus product has rocked our world—we think the last time must have been the Eee—but the Atom-powered SSD-based Asus S101 looks amazing for its price—even better than we thought before. Just 1kg and a tapering 17.8mm thin (a bit thicker than the Air), its 10.2" LED screen runs at WSVGA (1024x600) resolution. And with 802.11n, ethernet port, Bluetooth, multitouch trackpad, 4-in-1 card reader, 20GB of free online storage and high quality speakers, the S101 packs plenty of useful features—though it only has 1GB of RAM and appears to have the same fatal flaw as the MacBook Air. Yes, the S101 uses a non-replaceable, 5-hour polymer battery.

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Sound the alarm for hard disks—it looks like solid state drive prices have plunged enough to finally jump out of early adopter territory. California-based flash memory maker Super Talent is now offering a 128GB SSD for $US300 retail. That's $US150 cheaper than a comparable offer from Dell and about $US4.95 cheaper per GB than Intel's disks (though, granted, Intel's runs faster).

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Samsung released a video in which members of their staff threw an SSD off a three story building and then plugged it into a laptop, where it was operational. Though the computer screen at the end of the video gets washed out, you barely makeout the Windows XP desktop. Naysayers and skeptics should also note that once the SSD was thrown off the building, the video was never cut. Not too shabby. [Samsung SSD]

Intel's slightly delayed leap into the SSD game is now official, with the company announcing a US$595 pricetag for an 80GB SSD, which comes in 1.8-inch (X18-M) or 2.5-inch (X25-M) sizes for the same price, with 160GB versions coming later this year. While that's a considerably higher price-per-gigabyte ratio than what can be found on more generic SSDs, Intel will hopefully bring the performance standards so badly needed in the SSD world, where actual real-world performance can vary greatly from what's stated (take everyone upset about the MacBook Air's SSD, for instance). Intel's SATA drive is rated for 250MB/s reads and 70MB/s writes, with 85-microsecond latency. Full details follow.

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Dell's offering up a 128 GB SSD for their XPS M1330 and M1530 laptops and even with the dwindling prices of SSDs, US$450 doesn't sound like a half-bad deal. [Dell via Engadget]

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Samsung has been pioneering efforts to improve performance of SSDs in operating systems, working with Apple to integrate ZFS reading and writing to the next version of OSX Server. This means a 128-bit file system with faster data throughput and lots of other fun things that make servers run better. This also means Apple is taking SSD technology seriously, as it has already dropped the price of the SSD upgrade for the MacBook Air—the only current MacBook to ship with an SSD option—to US$599 from US$999. We likely won't see SSDs across the MacBook lines yet, but this means it could be in the cards. [MacRumors]

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The shiny brown machine in the photo there is apparently the top-of-the-range Eee PC S101 that was shown in Asus' leaked presentation last month. It looks just a little bigger than the white 901 model next to it, and it will be about 2.2cm deep, have a 10.1-inch LED-lit LCD, and have an Intel Atom purring away inside. What makes it "ultimate" is presumably in part its SSD: it'll come with either a 32GB or 64GB solid-state drive, and that's why the two models will cost around US$699 and US$899 when available in October. And they may not carry the "Eee" label, or so the rumour goes. [PChome.tw]

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