San Jose (CA) - Back in early April, we spoke with Joe James, SuperTalent's marketing guru. He was convinced that industry trend of SSD's replacing conventional HDD in unstoppable. Secondly, he was certain that the trend of 50% price reduction every 9 months will continue in foreseeable future.

Today, SuperTalent launched new SSD drives and confirmed the 50% price reduction trend. For first time in brief history of Solid State Drive technology, you can get a 120 GB hard drive for just $699, almost half of price for most 64 GB drives we heard about. 60 GB drive will set you back for $449, while the 30 GB one dips under $300 barrier, albeit just for a dollar. All drives use SATA-II or SATA 3.0Gbps interface, and come in 2.5" form factor.

Truth to be told, these affordable drives use Multi-Level-Cell technology and you should not confuse them with current-gen SLC drives that we mostly read about. MLC technology does not allow breaking records in writing speed. But reading is rated at 120MB/s, which should be more than enough.

When I bought my 32 GB SSD from Samsung in 2006 and put it inside Q30Plus notebook, SSD drive settled me back for almost $2K.  But read speed of 120 MB/s was stuff dreams were made from. Performance of that drive, considered world's best SSD - was in 35-50 MB/s read range (don't ask about write). But even that was enough to beat default 1.8" 4300 rpm drive. Now, imagine putting a 120 MB/s read, 40 MB/s write SSD in your notebook that is currently ran either with 5400rpm or even 7200 rpm HDD.

Besides affordable MLC products, SuperTalent also launched its performance line of single-level-cell (SLC) SSD drives, at more traditional prices. 60GB drive will set you back for $1299, while 30GB SLC has a price tag of $699. This also brings the price differentiator between SLC and MLC technologies.

Choice is obvious: if you want capacity, $699 will get you 120GB (120MB/s read, 40MB/s write), while those yearning for speed can take a 30GB drive with 120MB/s read and 70MB/s write. As soon as 120GB drive gets halved in price, you can expect mainstream adoption. We can't wait…

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