Crossing the Technological Rubicon

It's not often that we get to do something momentus in terms of technology, especially for someone like me who tends to buy after things hit the "sweet spot". In the last post, I talked about upgrading my X300 and having an extra drive as a result. In the post before that, I discussed the demise of the Mushkin Chronos SSD, which is in the process of being RMA'd. Well, I did it again! While in the process of looking at MacBook Pros, then trying to find a Dell E6400 for a friend the other day; I came across a Craigs List ad for an SSD.......new Samsung 256Gb for $100.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking; I was thinking the same thing. SCAM, not really "new", really a refurb, another one of those "penny auction", "I just sold it, but I can tell you where to get one just like it" things. Turns out, it wasn't any of those things. it was being sold be the same guy who was selling the Dell Latitude E6400 that I was buying for my friend. Apparently, he works for/or with Dell and has access to lots of their "sell-off" type stuff. He picked up a bunch of them to use and sell when Dell decided to move on to the new faster SATA-3 standard. I don't know what he paid for them (it must have been great), but I don't really care since $100 for a new 256Gb SSD is a great price in an of itself. Especially because it's a Samsung which is generally considered to be right up there with Intel on reliability. Given that my machine is older and wouldn't see the benefits of SATA-3 anyway, this is pretty awesome. In fact, it turns out that this particular drive is the sell-to-OEM repackaged Samsung 470 that I used in the Viking mini-HTPC build last month. 

So, along with this situation and the RMA'd Chronos returns, I'll have 3 spare SSDs. This puts me in the unique position of being able to move all of my front-line computers to either a single SSD or an SSD boot drive/mechanical storage drive combo with the exception of the file server. That's 5 laptops: 240Gb Sandisk in my wife's T61, 128Gb Samsung in both my X300 and Z61m mobile workstation, 50Gb in my son's Z60t, and 64Gb in the daughter's X61. That's along with a 256Gb + 1Tb in my desktop workstation, 64Gb + 500Gb in the living room HTPC, and 64Gb + 500Gb in the bedroom HTPC. The amazing this is that it wasn't intentional or extravagant, just an almost imperceptible shift in storage medium that's completely changed everything.