PQI, a taiwanese manufacturer, has released a range of 2.5" SATA flash hard disks with capacities up to 64GB. Shocking, particularly because well respected sources indicated as little as 6 months ago that a 4 year timeframe for such deployment was optimistic.
There is no indication of cost yet; the product isn't even on the official PQI website; and we certainly didn't expect this news now, so soon after there were reports that flash memory capacity was being strained by Apple's purchase of large quantities of flash memory (for a nano-update), so we're not entirely sure that the news is kosher.
Should it be true, we're in for a great time, subnotebook-wise. Flash uses less battery life, and is faster. We're not sure if the device deals with the limited number of writes that flash memory can handle, but no doubt details about that will surface soon.
And perhaps Window Vista's "readyboost" won't be entirely useless...
[via Newlaunches]
