SSDs are replacements for common (aka old fashioned) hard drives. They’re better in every way except their cost. Even the lowest performing SSDs are twice as fast as hard drives and they have no moving parts so are more resilient in a mobile computer.

For most users, an SSD is an extravagance. Until now. A typical consumer will be just fine with 30 – 60 GB of hard drive space. I base this on annecdotal evidence from those I know. A modern fresh computer installation takes about 5GB. A large photo collection adds 5 – 15 GB and a large music collection 10 – 20GB more. Documents, email and work often take under 1 GB but on a very busy person’s system make take as much as 5GB.

To put that into perspective, an iPad, which is a device targeted at media consumption such as graphics and video (the largest files a person will typically have on their computer) come in ranges of 16 – 64GB with 32GB likely being the sweet spot.

The exciting news is that now you can buy after market SSDs in the 30 – 60GB range for about $100. Alas, even though a budget computer for sale in retail could ship with a 60GB SSD, it would look paltry compared to a similar HDD based unit with a 250GB drive.

So the era is here, but it’s still primarily for the people who care enough about technology to upgrade their computer or those who are willing to spend the much larger sum for a high capacity model on a high-end computer.

But, as we’ve seen in many other areas, the adoption rate will grow now that we’ve hit this important price point.