ThinkPad Laptops Now Available with Samsung 1.8-inch Drives

Samsung (News - Alert) Electronics, a company that provides semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence solutions, said that its 1.8-inch solid state drive (SSD) in 64GB and 128GB capacities is being used in ThinkPad X301 ultra-portable laptop computers.

 

The recently launched ThinkPad X301 delivers approximately 20 percent better performance over its predecessor, the ThinkPad X300, as it has been optimized for Samsung’s new DDR3 main memory and the latest Intel (News - Alert) Core 2 Duo ultra-low-volt processor.

 

Five other laptops by Lenovo (News - Alert) — including the ThinkPad X200, T400, T500, W500 and W700 — offer Samsung’s 64 GB SSD as an option.

 

According to PCMark05 testing by Samsung, the performance of its new SSD has been benchmarked at more than twice that of a 7200 rpm hard drive. This SATA 3.0Gb/s (SATA II) SSD by Samsung features a write speed of 70MB/s and a read speed of 90MB/s.

 

The new SSD consumes a power of 0.41 watts when operating and 0.24 watts while in idle, which is significantly less than a typical hard drive, resulting in up to 10 percent added battery life.

 

The Samsung SSD features high shock resistance, is noiseless and virtually free of heat emissions, and ensures long-term endurance making it more reliable than a HDD.

 

Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing at Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. said that the company is seeing a strong continuation of the push by OEM’s to have more PCs offered with SSD storage, which makes a lot of sense for those who can see its extended value proposition over the life of the notebook.

 

Elliott noted that the fact that Lenovo now also offers SSDs as an option in its ThinkPad ultra-portable notebooks is indicative of the growing popularity of SSDs as a viable storage medium in PCs overall.

 

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is the largest producer of high-capacity SSDs in the world with mass production of 64 GB and 128 GB SSDs, and the company made consolidated sales of $103.4 billion in the year 2007.