Toshiba's 12.1-inch Dynabook SS RX1: 11-hours with 64GB SSD

Toshiba is showing off their 12.1-inch Dynabook SS RX1 this morning with specs aiming to please. According to Akihabara News, the store front model (read: not available on-line) can be configured with a 64GB SSD, a first if true but not a surprise. Configurable with a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo U7600 proc, up to 2GB of memory and 11-hour battery. All this in a 19.5~25.5-mm sled. On sale in Japan starting today for about ¥279,800 or $2,284 well equipped but without the SSD.

[Via Akihabara News]

[ragu @ Jul 4th 2007 8:51AM]

Wow, thats impressive. I believe SSD will take over HD in a few months from now.

[Peter @ Jul 4th 2007 9:44AM]

In your (and my) dreams.

SSD is an option on the new small Dell XPS M1330. It is 32GB and $600 extra.

Economics drive of this than anything else, these will be exceedingly rare for a long, long time.

People have been talking solid state replacing HD for years. I remember when we only had 20MB HD, now we have 64GB SS, but now we also have 1TB HD for less than that 64GB SSD. That economic relation will always exist and people will always be tempted to get much more storage for much less money.

In a couple of years I will consider getting a 32GB SSD ultra portable laptop when they are affordable, but I will also have a plug in external with a a TB when I needed it.

Not many people will pay $10/GB when they can get it for 50cents/GB by going with HD.

[a ham sandwich @ Jul 4th 2007 10:38AM]

peter, i completely agree with you, that with solid state, the name of the game is economics. however, i must add that i believe that ssd's will eventually replace hdd's. maybe not in the "few months from now" that ragu claims. it may take a few years, but i believe that it's inevitable. its benefits certainly outway its one negative (cost, for the time time being).

over time, its price will come down, and its capcities will skyrocket literally exponentially (since its all powers of 2, unlike with hard drives). just like flat panel tvs are now replacing projection tv's with their lower (comparatively to 3 years ago) cost, better viewing angles, and slimmer profiles. i believe that ssd's will follow the same path.

i can't wait until the solid state technology is cheap enough to fit into my notebook.

[Peter @ Jul 4th 2007 2:11PM]

Ham: I have been into watching computer trends since before we had hard drives in the general public. My first computer was a Vic-20 and I was studying computer science at University in the 1980's. I see no evidence that the growth curve for either silicon or disk platters will alter anytime significantly soon. The relation is very much the same as it was 10 years ago. You pay 10-20 times as much for solid state storage as for platter storage.

No moving parts is nice, but most people wont pay 1000% premium for it.

In an ultra portable tablet/notebook when it gets a bit more affordable maybe. But I have been thinking that for a while. By the time the current amount gets affordable you will discover that it is no longer adequate. I remember several years where people bought HD that only had MegaBytes. Who would buy an HD in Megabytes today? It is an unusable amount.

When 100GB SSD is affordable we will all have affordable multi Terabyte HDs and will have a hard time imagining going back.

SSD will always be an expensive compromise in small size storage. It is a compromise I might make at some point, but it will always be more expensive for less capacity and most people won't bother.

[JoeX @ Jul 4th 2007 9:33AM]

- I wish these things were easily available in North America. They never seem to be.

- I'd also like to see it priced around $800. Now I'm dreaming ...

[kev @ Jul 4th 2007 10:23AM]

Yeah, you'd get about 0.25 hour battery life if that were the case/

[Sherif Hammad @ Jul 4th 2007 11:12AM]

I want to buy this model so i am following all its news, but the thing is that there are actually 2 models that look the same and i cant get any info about their differences!

- Toshiba Dynabook SS RX1
and
- Toshiba portege R500

anybody know the differences?

Dynamism told me they are not the same, but they didnt reply yet about what are the differences!

[Robert Johnston @ Jul 4th 2007 11:22AM]

I think the whole "SSD will replace HDDs" thing is never going to work. The economics simply don't work, and I doubt they will ever work.

However, I do forsee (Especially for Laptops) a time when a laptop will be shipped with 2 drives. One SSD for the system, applications and paging, and the other for raw storage. That way you can boot/run the laptop entirely from the SSD, only spinning up the HDD for other, non-essential data (Like MP3s, movies, large images etc).

Just my £0.02

[Tyk @ Jul 4th 2007 11:34AM]

The Japanese VAIO TZ90 lets you do that already..

32gb SSD, 120gb HDD, no optical drive

[ethana2 @ Jul 4th 2007 1:38PM]

Whoa, hold it. Your £0.02 is 4¢. You can't do that. Try ¥. The Japanese are going to see this first anyway.

(Gotta love the colemak keyboard layout. Special characters and all ;) -typing Øẅñågé)

On topic again, from what I understand, the seek time benefits you get from these things are nil, relative to the horrible bandwidth to them. Is this correct?

[Robert Johnston @ Jul 4th 2007 1:50PM]

SSDs have no seek time (Information is available instantly) and bandwidth is massive (can easily saturate any interface you care to throw at it). The problem with SSDs is the limited times each "Byte" can be written to. Admittedly, that is somewhere in the region of 10,000 writes or so, and with "Wear levelling" that can be balanced out across the disc, however it still means flash storage has a "Limited" (Compared to magnetic media) lifetime.

[Ynohtna @ Jul 4th 2007 12:24PM]

I'm ready to buy SSD now. I want the 64meg ssd but my trigger point would be the $600 price point.

[pkilla @ Jul 4th 2007 1:29PM]

SSD Rules! lol

[Martin @ Jul 5th 2007 1:21AM]

While it'll take many, many years for SSD to replace HDD as high capacity storage devices. For devices, like laptops, where speed is more important than space, it's very apparent that we are nearing a time where SSD will replace HDD as the primary medium for accessing the OS and applications. This is mainly due to a realistic cap on how much space those 2 things will need.

For proof of this just look at the amount of space people use for non-media related items. Generally people use between 20-35GB of space. I am someone who has every possible application installed on my computer including the use of Windows Vista Ultimate, and I'm still only using like 45GB. Now that SSD's can fulfill that need, the only thing left to happen is for the price to drop, not for storage space to increase.

[guest30023 @ Jul 17th 2007 8:55PM]

Where do you buy this and when will it be released in the US?

[Andrew Chen @ Aug 6th 2007 8:19PM]

I have a Toshiba Satellite, which when booted recently, displayed Dynabook splash screen instead of Toshiba. Anybody know why?

[Harry Schwarz @ Oct 22nd 2007 2:36AM]

Eventually SSD's will replace HDD's, and it will be in the very near future. I can remember paying $1100 for my first JVC VCR back in 1980. Tapes were $25 each. Now look. DVD players, which cost hundreds of dollars just 5 or 6 yrs ago, are cheap. So are DVD burners,which used to cost a couple grand. It just makes sense that manufacturers will eventually stop making platters,just as they've almost stopped manufacturing CRT's or VHS tapes. SSD's are large enough now(160GB) for anyone to use. Who, except for large companies, even needs a TB of space? The regular consumer will be fine with 128G. All we need is for the price to drop. And that will happen as soon as a manufacturer like HP or DELL or any of the others begins to compete in the SSD marketplace.

[Jim H @ Nov 16th 2007 8:30PM]

I was going to buy a Toshiba Portege R500 with a 64GB SSD but there's no supply at the moment.

Fortunately, I've just taken delivery of a Dell XPS M1330 with a 64GB SSD in it. I know I've paid a premium as an early adopter but I've been wanting this tech for some time. The Dell is a great machine and in fact I think I prefer it to the Toshiba. It certainly has a better spec CPU, graphics card and keyboard IMHO.

SSDs will probably be ubiquitous in ultra-portables within the next year or two. Prices will drop quickly and the benefits in terms of robustness, speed and energy efficiency will make them a no-brainer. They will, eventually, be much cheaper than HDDs I'm sure of that.

In the meantime, my XPS runs fast, cool and silent and I'm one happy Dell customer;).