How long will SSDs take to drop in price enough to make them attractive to a mass market? A while for sure, though the many advantages they offer might make the price gap worth it. With what is currently available, the costs are around five times that of a standard hard drive, per gigabyte. According to Samsung, within about three years, that price gap will drop to three times, a significant reduction though still making SSD expensive. However, the higher cost per gigabyte isn't stopping vendors from preparing to roll out SSD to the masses, as we are seeing with Dell and other notebook manufacturers.

Given that the majority of notebook users do not come even close to filling up the disks on the units, a 32GB or 64GB limitation really may not be that big of deal compared to the increased battery life and improved performance. Much of the price currently may also be attributed to first-to-market technologies, and likely it won't be long before a 64GB SSD becomes a standard option on many notebooks.