SSDs have the capacity, they have the performance and the availability needed to compete with magnetic hard drives. But there’s still one area left where vast improvement is needed, and that's in pricing. When you can get 2TB of space for under $150, who would want to pay four times as much for a fraction of that? Not many. Intel in particular realizes that and is tackling the problem with a significant price drop for their hardware.


Starting with the very fast X25-M, Intel has implemented price drops of $50 on the 80GB model and $100 on the 160GB model. That puts each drive at $319 and $629, respectively. These prices have already been reflected in online retail sites, such as Newegg. While not falling into the realm of “cheap,” pricing for all SSDs has come a long way. Intel, at least, is now on more level ground with their competition.

No other price drops on their higher-end SSDs are planned. At these prices, Intel does have a chance to get their drives into many more machines, particularly laptops, where the price difference between hard drives and SSDs isn't as large and the advantages of SSDs can really shine.