For the past few months, the transition from traditional platter-based hard drives to solid state drives has become a popular topic among notebook enthusiasts. Mainly because they offer faster loading times, give off less heat, and require less power to run. One bone of contention, though, has been its steep price and limited storage capacity compared to traditional hard drives.

Giving a boost to SSD storage capacity, Samsung yesterday announced that it has begun shipping a 2.5-inch SATA 64GB solid state drive for use in Dell and Alienware consumer notebooks.

Alienware will provide a dual 64GB SSD Raid 0 configuration and a dual drive configuration combining a 64GB SSD and a 200GB 7,200 RPM hard drive, available on the powerful Area-51 m9750 gaming notebook. Dell will be offering the SSD drive on its XPS M1330 ultra-portable notebook, and expects to make it available on additional XPS systems, as well as on its Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision mobile workstations later this year.

Customers will have to reach deep into their pockets to be able to enjoy the 64 GB SSD, though. Alienware's Area-51 m9750 notebook steps up by a whopping $1,100 with the addition of the 64GB drive, while the Dell upgrade will set you back $920.