The high price of entry level primary storage

[cbn]

Recently, I have been playing around with ubuntu 14.04 booting from a San Disk Cruzer 8GB usb 2.0 stick. I loaded Ubuntu onto the usb stick using the Univeral USB Installer from Pendrivelinux.com. I also added in some additional file storage (available as an option when using the Universal USB installer utility) for persistent changes.

So far I am impressed by how well it is actually performing for web browsing and email. Granted, the boot time is abysmal....but after it gets booted up I would say it is adequate for the very light usage tasks I mentioned.

With that mentioned, It will be interesting to see just how much budget usb sticks improve in the next few years. Maybe at some point cheap usb 3,0 sticks will be enough to replace HDD or SSD for the most budget oriented low power Mini-ITX desktop systems?

 

[Cerb]

eMMC has already taken that niche over, in terms of non-DIY. And with DIY, the cost different for better storage is just too little not to spend a hair more..

 

[cbn]

eMMC has already taken that niche over, in terms of non-DIY. And with DIY, the cost different for better storage is just too little not to spend a hair more..

I agree that eMMC has already taken over that niche for pre-built, but this is not yet available for DIY.

Example; If I buy a BGA Mini-ITX on super sale (Recently I bought a Celeron 847 BGA Mini-ITX motherboard and Kabini E1-2100 BGA Mini-ITX brand new from Newegg for $32 each after rebate) stepping up to a $45 SSD or HDD is quite a sum of money proprotionally compared to the $32 price of the BGA CPU motherboard.

If my CPU and motherboard combined cost is $32, I would much rather pay much less for my storage (and connect to NAS or Cloud if needed)