Samsung has not yet released any word on how much this drive will eventually cost, but they have begun producing a new 256GB SSD (solid state drive). The flash-based 256GB hard drive would replace either your laptop or desktop computer's regular hard drive and add both improved read and write speeds (sequential read speeds of 220MBs per second, sequential write speeds of 200MBs per second, and erase speeds of 100GBs per minute), as well as better battery life on portable machines, thanks to SSD's improved performance over traditional hard drives.

According to Samsung's Vice President of Memory Marketing, Jim Elliott, the performance improvement in a laptop is ”analogous to having a 15,000rpm drive, without all of its size, noise, power and heating drawbacks." The Samsung 256GB SSD drive will be available with proprietary encryption programming for full disk encryption of files. Normally, SSD drives are dramatically more expensive than traditional hard drives, but when Samsung first claimed they would start producing 256GB SSD drives about six months ago, they said that the drives would be affordable. The real news about this device will arrive when we know how much it costs and whether or not it will actually be affordable.

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