Kingston marks its entry into the SSD market with their new SSDNow V Series and while it targets the value segment, it provides good enough performance for the mainstream.
While hard drive makers are scrambling to gain new technologies for the coming transition to all SSDs, memory makers are taking the move in stride as it is their technology that is driving the market. For manufacturers such as Kingston, SSDs give another market for their primary product of memory chips. Since a solid state dish is just a mashing of specific flash and a controller, it makes sense that these companies have embraced the new market. Kingston has previously re-branded the excellent Intel X series SSDs for their line up, but recently added their in house manufactured V Series. The V means value, and that's what you are getting with the Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB drive.
While many companies have jumped on the SSD bandwagon and released some really bad SSDs based on a controller that was awful for performance (JMicron), Kingston selected to partner with Intel initially to provide the top of the line drives. Months of testing and validation had to pass before the controllers were stable and had good performance before Kingston would approach making their own line of drives. Once the stability of the controller was there, Kingston finally designed their own line of drives in the form of the V Series. It is an MLC drive and targets the value segment of the market. It should be competitive with traditional hard drives and good for people that don't need the ultra high capacity that traditional magnetic drives currently reign supreme on.
Kingston packages the SSDNow V Series in a black box with a few different color accents. The retail kit that was sent is the desktop kit. There are two other versions (a notebook kit and a bare drive).
For the desktop kit, Kingston packs in a bootable CD with Acronis cloning software so you can easily clone your old drive onto the brand new shiny SSD. The notebook kit offers a USB hard drive kit to put your old drive in (smart thinking).
The kit also provides 2.5"-3.5" mounting brackets as well as the cabling. The mounting bracket is a very nice addition considering most cases still don't offer 2.5" drive bays.
Innovative -- 2.5" form factor; uses NAND flash memory components.
Shock Resistant -- No moving mechanical parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions.
I remain unconvinced that SSDs will replace standard 3.5" drives until the size/price gap is narrowed. They are admittedly much better than low-speed 5400 drives even with price factored in, but I think the difference is still too great compared to 7200 RPM and above drives considering the highest-advertised number in the field is usually size alone.
Have you used one yet? It will change your mind.
Yes. Someone at college has an XPS M1530 with a 128 SSD that I have fiddled around with. I'm not sure whether it was just because his laptop is less powerful than mine, but I didn't see the earth moving changes I was expecting.
It was hella faster than any 5400 RPM drive I've ever used, though.
Did You Ever Run It As Your host Operating System? I Wanted to know if the Boot Times Were Significantly better. Until The price drops, Or I Obtian one from work, I wont be playing with one.
Yes, that's what the main benefit to SSDs are.
Right Now Ive Got 3 Hard Drives, My Main 160 an Internal Music Drive, And An External Game/ Other Crap.