Intel Flash Drive: The Size of your Fingertip
by Frank Jovine on 06/07/2008 in Business, Hardware
Today, disk drives offer the best dollar to GB ratio. Flash drives have to offer something different like 
the all new Intel flash drives.
How small are they?
The size of your fingertip. The Z-P140 measures 12 x 18 x 1.8 mm and weighs 0.6 grams – 400 times smaller and 75 times lighter than a 1.8″ hard disk drive. 12 mm is about half an inch.
The Z-P140’s big brother, the Z-P230 PATA SSD, is only 1/4 the size and weight of a 1.8″ drive. Much of that is due to the size of the PATA connector.
What capacity?
The drives will be available in 2, 4, 8 and 16 GB capacities. These capacities are more tailored for cellphones, media players, Eee-class notebooks and the like.
Part of Intel’s offer is size. The other is cost. They’ve priced the drives below where disk drives can go due to unavoidable hardware costs like heads and motors.
The pricing for 1,000 units available Q3 2008 for the 4GB is $25 and the 8GB part is $45. The 16GB will be available in Q4 2008.
ameo
Jun 7th, 2008
there will come a time that the whole computer can be carried in your sunglasses and you can browse by just blinking your eyes
Frank J
Jun 7th, 2008
I would agree that there’s no limits to where technology will go.
Yannis
Jun 9th, 2008
We are in the future. It’s incredible what 15 years have done.
Limits are set by our own imaginations.
Anon
Jun 9th, 2008
ameo… Its really not much more advanced than things like mini sd cards which come to 4gb fingertip size….
my name is yianni
Jun 10th, 2008
my name is yiannis too. not everyday i see that.
keep it real chip nerds.
gaspaxo
Jun 12th, 2008
The Singularity is coming…
eheh
ben
Jun 12th, 2008
wait, ameo wouldnt browsing to a new page everytime you blink be really annoying? just saying.
Maxwell314
Jun 12th, 2008
looks like a ZIF type connector. I have not had many good experiences with ZIF drives (like the drives they use in the 5th Gen Ipods). Expect a lot of ruined cables.
matt
Jun 13th, 2008
good stuff. i look forward to seeing these in some devices
Dustin
Jun 20th, 2008
What about speeds. Some SSD’s are not that much faster than standard HD’s. Sure, they are small, but like others have said… What’s the difference between that and an SD card? SSD’s were to be the fastest thing out there, beating all the HDD’s. I don’t see that as the case.
Intel is making a good step forward, but until the speeds are there, I’m not biting.
Peter
Jun 26th, 2008
While SD and MicroSD cards are very small, they still require hardware to be read. The combined size of the MicroSD card and its reader would far exceed the size of Intel’s new flash drives. I just hope to see a 32GB version at some point in the near future as a 16GB is still rather limited for use in anything running WinXP.
CPeterka
Jun 29th, 2008
The time will come, ( 10 years? ) when we will have chips implanted in our heads that will give us virtually unlimited storage, and a Heads-Up-Display accessable via the optic nerve. It will take over the function of the home computer, cell, GPS, etc, and all can be accessed in real time as we walk along. Don’t worry about people driving and computing, as the cars will be autonomous, and we will just ‘think’ where we want to go, and they will transport us there by the ‘best – safest, most energy efficient, most direct’ route possible. We will be able to override the path, but the car will do the driving. Welcome to the future.
paresh
Jul 1st, 2008
how small?
Boy Cott Intel !
Jul 1st, 2008
An absolutely useless review.
Why not go to the effort of providing the speed element in these devices ?
Is it because the transfer rate is so poor that it can’t even be compared to that of the A-typical hard disk ?
Yeah, admittedly this is great for those 400Mhz PDA phones but even those people are after quicker devices and not smaller ones !