Dell today announced that it is offering a 1.8-inch 32GB1 solid state drive (SSD) from SanDisk on Latitude D420 ultra-mobile and D620 ATG semi-rugged notebooks. The company is one the first to offer a flash-based drive as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDD) on corporate notebooks.

Dell sees potential for flash-based drives and is committing to offer them across next generation Latitude notebooks because they enable better reliability, increased performance and noise reduction.

A SSD is a hard drive alternative based on flash memory. Unlike a traditional HDD which uses spinning discs and read/write heads, a SSD is designed with flash memory with no moving parts. The new drive has the same shape and size as a HDD and uses the same connectors for integration into existing systems.

"A solid state drive is an excellent storage technology for our mobile users," said Kevin Kettler, chief technology officer at Dell. "We are committed to leading the industry in delivering these new drives and will offer them across Dell's next generation of Latitude products."

Reduced cost through reliability, increased performance
Engineering tests show that the SSD has an operating shock tolerance of up to 1,300 Gs, which is twice the rating of mechanical drives. In fact, during extreme impact testing the surrounding notebook hardware breaks before the drive2. In addition, the drives are predicted to reduce the probability of failure by three-and-one-half times compared to standard mechanical drives3. This will help reduce costs associated with hard drive failures, which analyst firm Gartner reports is one of two top sources of system malfunctions in notebooks and accounts for up to 45 percent of total hardware failures4.
"This represents an important milestone in the evolution of personal computers with the arrival of solid state flash memory as a durable, efficient alternative to the hard drive," said Eli Harari, SanDisk's founder and CEO."For those enterprise road warriors who rely on their notebook PCs, hard drive crashes with attendant loss of critical data will soon be a thing of the past. We're delighted that Dell has chosen the SanDisk SSD to launch this technology into their line of mobile PCs."

The new drives can also increase system performance by up to 23 percent5 and decreases boot time by up to 34 percent compared to traditional HDDs available with the Latitude D420 and D620 ATG6.

Pricing and availability
The SSD drives are available today at a list price of $549 in the Americas Availability will soon follow in Europe and Asia.

About Dell
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they trust and value. Uniquely enabled by its direct business model, Dell is a leading global systems and services company and No. 34 on the Fortune 500. For more information, visit Find a Notebook, Desktop, Server, Printer, Software, Service, Monitor or TV at Dell., or to communicate directly with Dell via a variety of online channels, go to www.dell.com/conversations. To get Dell news direct, visit www.dell.com/RSS.

__________________
Layne P. Heiny / Administrator for Tux Reports Network

Please do not send private messages requesting technical support. Place your request in the proper forum and hopefully someone can help you.

Computer Sites
Tablet PC Blogs | Technology Questions | Tablet PC Post | Windows Vista | What Is New

Prelaunch
Insane Politics