Mark you calendars kids, 'cause June marks the commercial introduction of Samsung's solid state laptop. Sammy just announced that their sweet, sweet
NAND-based Q30-SSD we first got
down and dirty with at CeBIT will hit the shelves in Korea (only) from early June onward. Yeah, it'll fetch a steep $3,700 US-equiv (a roughly $900 premium) on that aging 1.2GHz Celeron M
Q30 platform, but that 32GB of NAND reads 300 percent faster (53MB/s) and write 150 percent quicker (28MB/s) than normal hard drives while offering better protection against shock, 25-50% faster boots and sleep recovery times, longer battery life and reduced weight all in a completely silent, fanless package. Hoozah! Man oh man, the emergence of these high-capacity NAND drives coupled with the January release of Samsung's
NAND augmented hybrid hard drives (HHDs) is nothing but good for us laptop speed junkies.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Leon @ May 23rd 2006 5:36AM
Cool beans, its just sad that the thing has a 1.2 Ghz Celeron though, why no core solo or M at least? And the Graphics card is gunna blow chunks, my guess is intel extreme 2. Probably can't handle vista. It is very exciting though to see that Flash may soon take over. Whats the word on the optical drive and RAM though?
Mat @ May 23rd 2006 6:00AM
Its not a half bad looking laptop actually, if you got rid of the stickers on it, and changed the break-easy hinges, got rid of the aerial on the side, made the track pad slightly larger, coordinated the keyboard with the rest of the box you know, spent some time making it look decent. I think even though it has a relatively low spec, the performance of the HD will make a huge difference! Can you imagine the prices of gamer laptops/high end consumer laptops with one or two of those hard drives in! Eeek!
Gowtham Mahalingam @ May 23rd 2006 6:06AM
That is nuts, it sports DMB, an SSD, and other advanced technology and still has a celeron M 753 !?!!? That chip is antiquated at this point, especially in a laptop of this caliber and price point. When this does make it stateside, I am sure it will be significantly revised.
It will most likely see numerous revisions in the asian market as well? Anyways I can't wait for SSD to be the standard.
TZK @ May 23rd 2006 6:11AM
Get rid of that stupid antenna on the side please.
james @ May 23rd 2006 6:12AM
who know why it has an ariel sticking out???
Colin @ May 23rd 2006 6:21AM
DVB-T possibly?
paris @ May 23rd 2006 6:23AM
Everyhting that's korean has an antenna. I guess its the cool thing over there.
Walter @ May 23rd 2006 6:28AM
it is for DMB reception, and it is detachable. And obviously not everything that's Korean has an antenna.
Michael @ May 23rd 2006 6:29AM
Will I be able to replace my hard drive in my laptop with a NAND drive? I'd replace mine to get a faster boots and longer batter life.
As for optical drives - I have a Dell X1 which is a Samsung design. It does not have a built in optical drive and I do not miss it. It has an attachable disk drive for when I want to install software. --- They got rid of floppy drives, and I'll be happy when they get rid of optical drives. I download most of my software anyway. I also like the weight and size savings.
ii @ May 23rd 2006 6:50AM
ye, people from poor countries like USA and Japan do not have any idea of what that antenna might be
kibets @ May 23rd 2006 6:54AM
Oh... I just read the whole article:
The Q1-SSD will show video or still photos as well as play audio without having to be booted up first. This “instant on” feature provides access to multimedia content such as digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) TV at least 30% faster than with a portable multimedia player (PMP).
very nice...
mai9 @ May 23rd 2006 7:22AM
the original Q30 didn't have a 'celeron M', it had a 'pentium M'
TriZz @ May 23rd 2006 7:55AM
What program is running on the right side of the monitor? It looks like Spyderbar, but it's not...any ideas?
tape @ May 23rd 2006 8:03AM
if you refer to #9 he says it is vista, which would mean.... that utility bar that comes with vista perhaps.
TriZz @ May 23rd 2006 8:18AM
#14 - Thank you. I have the latest build of Vista (even authenticated) and it's not a feature that's available. Maybe it'll be in the final version...?
anon @ May 23rd 2006 8:22AM
Despite the expensive, yet superior aspects of NAND, I think time will show that hybrid drives (NAND and HDD) are the most favorable with consumers. A balance of speed, and price.
I don't see a market for an expensive machine with a low (32MB) storage capacity and low grade hardware. Sure, NAND's capabilities supplement the need for a better hardware, but not to that extent. I think we'll see that the first successful full NAND drives will be at least 64G and have top of the line hardware. The $5000+ notebook will rise again. And furthermore, companies will by it because a couple bucks is worth the security of better impact resistance, faster speeds, and low energy consumption.
anon.forever @ May 23rd 2006 8:49AM
Perhaps it was just a typo, but it states (32GB).
Anyway, what will the MTBF be? How long will this drive last with the constant writes/rewrites? Will this drive have about the same life span as an apple ipod?
TriZz @ May 23rd 2006 9:44AM
Thank you #18.
I'll have to check that out...
DT @ May 23rd 2006 11:14AM
32 GB with Vista? How much room is left for things like, oh, Minesweeper?
j3oomerang @ May 23rd 2006 11:19AM
maybe they used the slower processor so it didnt make as much heat and thus allowing it to be fanless
thecan @ May 23rd 2006 11:29AM
"Will I be able to replace my hard drive in my laptop with a NAND drive? I'd replace mine to get a faster boots and longer batter life. "
Maybe, but it will set you back at least a cool 1,000.00 bucks!!
Petr @ May 23rd 2006 11:33AM
It will actually have a "Intel GMA 900" so it wont run vistas auro theme, that sucks.
paul irwin @ May 23rd 2006 11:56AM
yes, because i want my system pagefile constantly being overwritten on a flash drive.
this drive would barely last a year, if that, under normal use.
DS @ May 23rd 2006 12:18PM
These guys have a *LONG* way to go before they are anywhere near Apple design wise. Nice try but like every other POS I think Ill pass....
DS
Derek McWilliams @ May 23rd 2006 12:46PM
Will this disk use a new physical interface ie not SATA / IDE ?
And is there a particular reason why this is restricted to windows only?
Just wondering if it would be possible to stick this new HHD into a macbook pro (imagine it.... it would be blinding!)
Alan Westbrook @ May 23rd 2006 1:06PM
I think the point of this hardware is to have as long of battery life as possible. The fact that it won't do Aero is a feature in this case. Less processing = less power = more battery life.
Clearly the same goes for the processor. Too bad full color 13" OLED displays aren't available, it would really make a difference to battery life.
yuppicide @ May 23rd 2006 1:52PM
Maybe I am missing something here.. don't flash drives have a certain read/write capability and then they die?! That would be used up in a few months on this laptop unless they have new technology.
- k E n - @ May 23rd 2006 8:11PM
yuppicide:- Yea, flash drives have a limitation but the Q30 uses SSD. There is a difference between them. Flash drives incorporates NAND memory where else SSD uses SDRAM memory which is the same ones use as RAM in you computer.
Having said that, SDRAM drives or SSD has a finite life too. Due to the diffence in architechture, SSD have algorithms that forces the drive to be writen over the entire drive instead of concentrating on one particular sector till its filled up. In this way, you can probably achieve BILLIONS (possibly trillions) of read/write for the whole drive. Now, a billion read/write would mean you can actually continuously read/write the drive for 50 years at the least NON-STOP. No computer can take that abuse and not to mention that even in 5 years time your computer would have been obsolute.
So, to answer your question, nope. SSD will not die in a few months time. ;)
- k E n -
Jake @ May 24th 2006 2:09AM
This isn't a Celeron guys. I think its a different-brand in different-country thing. Its a "Intel® Celero® M 753 (1.2GHz)"... I think 'Celero' means 'Centrino' or something. The 753 is an ultra low voltage (ULV) Pentium M. My laptop is the Acer TravelMate C110 with a 1GHz ULV pentium M - and its still fast enough for me. Best of all - my whole laptop including 10.4" screen draws just 13Watts of power under normal use.
But I want a solid state hard drive! I've been trying to get one for three years, but still far too expensive. With a SSD, the only noise left in my laptop will disappear, and power consumption should drop to under 10Watts.
Paul @ May 24th 2006 9:41AM
There is a linux distribution called 'puppy os' where the whole operating system is just 50 megs. Put that in this computer and you're golden.
If you have a computer/old laptop without a harddrive but it has a CD writeable drive, you can use puppy os on a multisession CD on the computer. All your changes are saved onto the CD. If the CD is 650 megs, and the OS is only 50, imagine the possibilities!
Nick @ May 24th 2006 2:54PM
#29 This SSD is NAND based. It has to be NAND in order to retain the information while it is turned off (like HDDs). (NAND is non-volatile memory while all families of DRAM are volatile hence lose the info without power.)
The point that NAND can only be written a certain number of times is valid. However not all flavors of NAND are the same. MLC is lower spec than SLC for example so works in a Nano as you re-write the whole thing maybe once a month, but would not work for storing the FAT files on your computer (several hundred writes per hour). I believe Samsung have employed lower spec NAND for storing the OS and application files but a higher spec NAND for the often re-written portion of the drive.
Jeffrey @ May 24th 2006 4:49PM
# of Writes?
I read somewhere that these flash drives have a limit to the number of times they can be written. Maybe it was a different type of memory, but I'd check into it if you are considering purchasing.
Sbarro @ May 25th 2006 2:34AM
Jake i agree with you. I have find this yesterday. There isn't such a thing like Celeron 1,2 753. Celeron M 1,2 GHz don't even had a model number like "380" so it's definitly Pentium M 1,2GHz ULV 753 ;PP
Bert @ May 25th 2006 8:46AM
I think the solid-state 'hard drive' is a very cool idea, I was speculating about that when they first released the 512MB flash drive. When I started with computers, a 40MB drive was 'a lot of space', today one install program can take that up, easy. I'd like to see a retrofit-kit for any brand of laptop to accomodate the NAND drive as an OEM replacement from the manufacturers, you figure one less spinning motor=1 less part to break, one less constant battery drain etc...question, what happens if you have abrupt power-off condition with a NAND drive, I repeat others' questions in terms of number of read-write cycles, I have seen different types of flash drives that do all kinds of neat tricks such as deny you access to your data, 'forget' some or all of your data, 'device not recognized/would you like to format' etc...have they 'idiot tested' these new drives, what happens if you get a 'bad sector' is that even possible or is it all-or-nothing on a NAND drive? I love the idea of the read-write speed, dual drives, PCMCIA card memory augmentation application potential etc...
TJ @ May 26th 2006 7:46PM
Its Pentium M, look at the sticker it has a Centrino sticker. Intel says that you need Pentium M in order for it to be considered as Centrino.
amo @ Aug 4th 2007 10:33PM
Nice Laptop with a good feature