PQI, Adtron, and Super Talent have all announed new flash-based solid-state drives this year, and now it's Samsung's turn. The Korean flash memory giant has expanded its SSD lineup to include a higher-capacity, speedier 1.8" model. The new 64GB drive is based on the 1.8" form factor used by iPods and other hand-held devices. Samsung says the new SSD has a read speed of 64MB/s and a write speed of 45MB/s, which is respectively 20% and 60% faster than the 32GB SSD model it introduced last year. For reference, the firm quotes a 15MB/s read speed and 7MB/s write speed for a standard 1.8" 80GB hard drive. The new SSD is scheduled to hit mass production in the second quarter of this year.

Expect this to cost well over a thousand dollars if you can buy it separately. The 32GB model added at least $900 to the laptops that offered it (mostly subnotebooks only available in Korea and Japan). Flash prices are dropping, but getting that much Flash running in parallel to offer that kind of read/write speed is still expensive, and will be for a few years yet.  Unfortunately...