Intel’s announcement of plans for a 40GB solid state drive (SSD) pricing in at a breakthrough $125 will put SSD technology firmly on the storage map for consumers and businesses.

This is a really good-sized drive as SSDs go, but at the price, it starts to become possible for companies to install the drives in their regular PCs as on-system back-up storage for critical data, such as customer databases and working documents.

There’s also an opportunity for PC vendors to go completely SSD and install a couple of these drives in a basic desktop, for use in corporate network environment. There is also a strong chance that netbook vendors will start installing this drive in their upcoming machines, as well as the expected surge of tablet computers expected to arrive this summer in the wake of the Apple iPad.

The $125 price point is a sweet spot as far as pricing and value goes, and since the drive is billed as being four times faster than a 7200rpm magnetic hard drive, its performance is also star quality.

The industry is still at the stage where it’s going to be around five years before SSDs are large enough – and priced – to truly start replacing regular hard drives in PCs and laptops. But at this price/performance level, especially with the clear speed advantage, you’re going to see a lot of netbooks and iPad clones with this drive and others in its family installed, since the speed helps to compensate for the slower processors you see in highly portable computers.

I think it will also be interesting to see if PC vendors install an Intel SSD for the operating system and other standard program files on the machine, and then use a larger magnetic drive for the data. That way users will get the best of both worlds.

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