Marco.org

The two new SSDs are X25M SATA parts weighing in at 80GB and 160GB, and they’re meant to replace Intel’s existing X25M drives in those capacities, but at 60 percent less cost and with better performance. The 80GB X25-M is $225 in lots of 1,000 (down from $595), and the 160GB is $440 (from $945).

This is a big deal for performance-hungry users, especially for decking out laptops.

However, the price cuts seem overstated — the now-previous-generation X25-Ms in 80 and 160 GB have been selling at near-retail in single-unit quantities for ~$315 and ~$630, respectively.

Hopefully this means that the new versions’ prices will soften soon. Hardly anyone who cares enough to buy these will be satisfied with 80 GB, so we can safely ignore the relevance of that one for the most part.

$440 for 160 GB is great news compared to the previous pricing, but we’ll really see large-scale adoption once we can get 160 GB for $200 and 320 GB for $400 — which, at the current rate, seems likely within 8-12 months.