I wrote a few weeks ago that the start of the demise of mechanical hard drives had begun. Here is a laptop that ASUS debuted at the electronics show, the S121 with a 512GB solid state drive that further cements this belief.

1/6/08 – Asustek Computer Inc. on Tuesday debuted an ultrathin, light netbook called the S121 with two new technologies, Microsoft’s yet-to-be released Windows 7 OS and the world’s largest solid-state drive (SSD) at 512GB.

The S121 is just under an inch thick, measures 11.7 inches by 8.3 inches, weighs about 3 pounds and features a touch screen that runs a specialized software that Asustek developed for easy-touch navigation.

It seems like everything is going touch screen these days – which will be great if you want to play Crayon Phyics Deluxe on your computer!

I figure that I will probably have one more set of mechanical hard drives to buy before the price of SSD drives are comparable to today’s prices for mechanical hard drives.

Mark Viquesney