Change continues at a hectic pace.

No sooner do I install a 120gB solid state boot/app Intel X25-M drive (SSD) in the HackPro than Intel announces many improvements and a price reduction. This message will likely be repeated often over the next few quarters and Intel is to be commended.

Intel SSD in the HackPro. Two 1 tB Samsung HDDs to the right.

Here’s what I got from Macworld’s lengthy piece on Intel’s latest:

• 30% price drop
• Sequential write speed more than doubled – holy moly!
• Redundant chips included in case any of the main ones fail
• Capacitors added so the write operation can be concluded if the power fails – wow!
• Capacities up to 600gB – but at a price – $1,069
• Despite the lowest industry failure rate of 1.4% in the current model, the new one aims to improve on that statistic, which is already far lower than for conventional HDDs.
• Intel is putting its mouth where its money is and using these in its servers.

My advice? Wait for these to hit Amazon and rush out and get one. There’s simply no going back once you have used one, be it in your laptop or desktop computer. The new model is the ‘320M’. HDDs are to storage what film was to photography 10 years ago.