SanDisk, a name synonymous with quality when it comes to flash memory, has outdone itself yet again with a new line of flash memory-based solid-state drives (SSDs) which were specially designed to cater for an emerging new category of portable consumer electronics known as Ultra Low-Cost PCs (ULCPC) or “netbooks” . Among the products that fall in such categories are the phenomenally successful Asus Eee PC and MSI’s Wind. The whole point to this new form of SSD is to provide an enhanced experience when surfing the Internet over a Wi-Fi connection. Dubbed the SanDisk pSSD (Parallel ATA solid state drive), this new technology does away with the need for a hard drive as it is able to provide more than enough space for both operating system and applications without missing a beat.

Of course, it won’t come with the capacity of a regular hard drive at this point in time, but future advancements ought to be able to see pSSD capacities catch up with their slower albeit (much) larger hard drives. Initially, SanDisk will be offering these new SSD modules in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities that boast a streaming read speed of 39MB/s and a streaming write performance of 17MB/s. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the Linux of Microsoft camp - this new pSSD from SanDisk is equally at home with either. For folks who can’t wait to catch a glimpse of this in the flesh, you can always check it out at Computex 2008 that is currently being held in Taiwan.

The new SanDisk pSSD solid state drives are tipped to be available from August onwards, and they are constructed using Multi-Level Cell (MLC) and Single-Level Cell (SLC) flash memory. Guess we ought to see larger capacity netbooks in the foreseeable future without a serious price hike. It is a good time to be a consumer, I say.

Press Release