Flooding in Thailand is expected to lead to a shortage in hard drives, since some of the top manufacturers of hard drives and components are located in that country.
The shortage could drive up the costs of hard drives temporarily — and some PC makers are already talking about raising computer prices as a result.
Cens reports that Acer chairman JT Wang has confirmed plans to raise the prices of personal computers this month in reaction to the hard drive shortage. The move could reduce sales, but help maintain profits for the company since Acer is focusing on high-end products such as the Acer Aspire S3 ultrabook.
About 25 percent of the world’s supply of hard drives comes from Thailand.
via Netbook News
I don’t believe this affects SSDs, but I’m not knowledgeable enough about that to have much certainty. Newegg prices for 2 TB drives have tripled last i looked.
Does this include SSDs? Hopefully companies will offer SSD options for notebooks. It would be nice to buy a notebook with an SSD already.
Some companies already offer SSDs for their notebooks. Hard drives are just the default option. So just look for companies that let you select system configuration.
SSDs are becoming more prevalent however, products like tablets and Ultrabooks are pushing for higher adoption of SSDs. Many of the new features Intel is touting for next gen systems also draw upon the benefits of SSDs. Since options like mSATA drives can serve as a supplemental drive without necessarily replacing hard drives we are likely to see more systems with SSDs.