That's basically what an SSD is.

SSD is what I meant. Couldn't think of the term. The only reason we're still using HDDs is because SSDs are cheaper. Meaning less money for the manufacturer. But somebody's gonna jump on it and the rest of them are gonna be screwed, I guarantee it. Give it five years.

I'm going to assume that you mean the only reason we are using magnetic drives are because they are still cheaper than equivalent flash drives.

Considering that the 64GB SSD in the MacBook Air costs approximately 600-700 USD, I imagine it will be a few years until they are adopted.

Still, its the way to go. Computers need an absolute bare minimum of mechanical moving parts (i.e. magnetic hard disks, optical disc drives, and motorized cooling systems).

Eventually SATA disk drives will completely take back the market. Think of SSD drives as old NES/SNES cartridges, except orders of magnitude smaller.

No, iirc, SSDs are cheaper to make. Not to buy, necessarily.

Way to have no grasp of economics at all. If something is cheap to make, and in low demand, you would not jack the price up with an obscene markdown. You would lower prices to stimulate demand.

Your mind is blinded by stupid ass Sony Entertainment of America logic.

Sigh. I know all about the R&D ♥♥♥♥. Don't give me that line. I'm talking from a materialistic standpoint. I meant WHEN R&D IS ALL DONE AND PAID FOR, IT WILL BE CHEAPER THAN HDDS. Completely ignoring any R&D, anything but the materials + manufacturing costs. Like, a five-ten years from now standpoint.

Again, not necessarily. Demand could inflate the prices, or there might ve unforseen cost requirements, or some better alternative might come sooner.

Nothing is certain. Never make assumptions like that, especially with respects to economics or the economy.

...
Semantics. Don't throw unknown variables into the equation. Not saying it won't happen, just for the sake of the argument.

Economic theory is the study of all calculable variables in "the equation." You're restraining the parameters of your argument for the sake of making yourself right when the entire picture is required to pass judgment.

My point is that those "unknown variables" could change the price (or even the existance) of this technology.

Sure, by the extremely narrow boudns you've limited your argument too, yes--if there is no more R&D to pay for, if manufacturing processes can be increased to a sustainable level, and if demand meets the supply, the cost iwll go down.

The thing is, the R&D on something like that will take more than "a few years," the manufacturing process might take an equal amount of time to refine, and the demand might be subjugated by another technology. You give certain requirements, yes, and your response would meet those requirements.

But economic theory and technology development are not restrained by three parameters.

Meh, k. Also, considering SSDs are, from my understanding, beastly ♥♥♥♥ RAM sticks, wouldn't it be possible to just cut a hunkoff to be used as RAM?
Also digitally cut not physically you morons.

Well, it's not exactly the same technology. RAM is volatile and loses its data when unpowered, whereas Flash memory is not. I'm not really sure what the technical differences are, though.

IIRC, the write times for SSDs can actually be slightly slower than conventional HDs, which would make them as useful for RAM as Vista's Readyboost.

Edit: With a quick visit to Wikipedia I've learned that there's SSDs based on Flash, and SSDs based on SDRAM with battery backup.

The latter is obviously far faster than our currently-typical consumer Flash SSDs, but, like RAM, will lose its contents if unpowered. I really wouldn't trust that built-in battery, but having a RAID of a Flash SSD for backup and an SDRAM SSD for quick (even quicker) access would be amazing.

tl;dr;havetogotoclass
But I think I understand what Ophanim was saying. From a manufacturing perspective, SSDs are have marginally more room for slight physical flaws. HDDs have to be incredibly precise at very high speeds. SDDs? Yeah they do too, sort of, but the mere fact that they have no moving parts will make them cheaper to manufacture and QC in the future.

I'm out.