(Special Report) - In addition to HDTV's, solid state storage drives made their way to CES as well, albeit in limited quantity. There was a lot of speculation on the show floor regarding SSD and companies were loaded with far-fetched answers. However, we can't blame them for our insistence on them predicting the future of SSD going forward.

Some companies said we could see 250GB SSD units by the end of this year, while others predicted it could take up to a couple of years for them to become mainstream. None of the companies promised mainstream adoption, but they promised a bright future and we are inclined to believe them. High capacity drives are going to be expensive due to their very nature of early technology and gradual adoption rate.

Technology Theme of 2008: Sexy Looks

Despite that, we saw SanDisk's 64GB 2.5-inch SSD and 64GB and 72GB 1.8-inch SSD. The storage company reduced their size to better fit them in upcoming notebook computers that are smaller and sleeker. A-Data upped the competition with a 128GB SATA RAID SSD. Ritech and Samsung also announced their 128GB drives in the same format. Most importantly, however, BitMicro took the stage with 832GB 2.5-inch SATA II SSD units. Needless to say, BitMicro's SSD devices were mainly there to attract media attention, as it's obviously a prototype not ready for full production, but it does prove that the industry could be ready for 250GB (a reasonable expectation on our part) relatively soon.

For the storage industry, SSD is the hottest thing for obvious reasons. With durability, reliability and size considered, it's up to storage and price to reconnect and get to an affordable price point for mainstream adoption.   

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