An editorial published on PC World discusses the bright future of solid state drives, even though the technology still hasn't hit mainstream PC users.
Hard disk drive sales dwarf the overall sale of SSDs, due to high prices and other limitations that hurt SSD adoption.
Analysts believe SSDs will end up being the format of the future, with performance boosts, less risk of mechanical failure, and the ability to withstand more abuse compared to regular HDDs. Until the price of the technology drops, however, HDDs will continue to lead sales charts.
The PC World report indicates that consumers can expect to pay upwards of $2.75 per GB of storage in SSD drives currently, while it's only $0.25 per gig for HDDs. Furthermore, there are storage limitations with solid state technology. 256GB is the current norm for SSDs at the moment, even though there are a select few 500GB and 1TB SSDs.
In the future -- as price drops and storage capacity increases -- it's likely the technology will only increase in popularity.
"SSDs are strong performers, especially on disk-read-intensive tasks, and an SSD can give an aging system new life; but before you grab one, you should consider whether the speed gains justify the sacrifice in storage space," PC World said at the end of the article.
