The 80Gb Intel MLC SSDs have been hard to find in-stock and prices
keep varying .... The original list price on the x25m 80Gb MLC drive
was $230 - and it was *supposed* to be available for less than that.
Demand has been high and a lot of on-line sellers have taken advantage
of the demand to keep prices high. In particular, newegg.com, who
usually have very keen pricing, has been selling the Intel SSDs at way
above list and are not competitive with other online retailers.
A possible work around is to shop for the 1.8" version of the drive -
which is more widely available with better pricing. You''ll need a
cable with a micro-SATA connector for this drive. You can find a
micro-SATA cable to standard SATA cable assembly here:
http://www.satacables.com/micro-sata-cables.html
Bear in mind that the 1.8" (x18m) drive is 5mm high - whereas the 2.5"
(x25m) drive is 7mm tall - and it comes with a plastic frame to
increase the height to 9.5mm for compatibility with some laptop
mountings.
Here''s a reference for physical form factor info on the Intel drives:
wget http://download.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/322296.pdf
and here is the spec for the micro SATA connector:
wget ftp://ftp.seagate.com/pub/sff/SFF-8144.PDF
NB: Make sure you get the G2 version of the Intel drive - regardless
of the form factor.
No affiliation with Intel etc.
--
Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc,Plano,TX al at logical-approach.com
Voice: 972.379.2133 Timezone: US CDT
OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Member - Apr 2005 to Mar 2007
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/ogb_2005-2007/
