WD SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD Review

Solid State Storage products are obviously setting the computing market on fire as of late.  There is little question that the writing is on the wall.  Like the vacuum tube transistors of yesterday, spinning hard drives are bound to go the way of the Dodo bird.  It's only a matter of time; not if, but when.  However, the "when" in reality will likely not come for years yet of course.  In the Data Center, where ridiculously cheap bulk storage is critical, there is just no substitution for the cost per gigabyte metrics of traditional spinning disk media.  However, in the end user notebook and desktop markets, especially where performance is often times a differentiator, SSDs are making huge inroads. It's only a matter of time (and cost reduction) before SSDs are the de facto standard for notebooks and then comes the desktop.  We won't make any grand predictions here but there's good reason why the major hard drive manufacturers are lining up now to get some skin in the game.

It's only natural that the major storage players are watching this market closely to align at the proper entry points.  Let's face it, the storage model historically has been all about volume and razor thin margins.  There's plenty of room for error with leading the curve in SSD technology, with the break-neck pace of evolution the product is going through currently.  There's literally a new product arriving to market monthly it seems.  And this time, the major storage players are going to be slugging it out in yet another razor-thin margin arena with the major memory manufacturers and that little company called Intel, gunning for their share of the kill. So why would good ol' Western Digital want in on this mayhem?  Because they have to eventually; it's that simple...

WD SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD Review

Marco Chiappetta

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com