[citation][nom]blader15sk8[/nom]I have seen the Vertex series, with similar specs going for under/around $100 for the 30GB version, how is this cheaper?[/citation]
You can even find SSD drives cheaper than that!
It has to do with the read and write speed. The first generation of MLC SSD drives is virtually useless nowadays.
Sata 1,pata, or even worse zif connectors where about as slow as an SD card.
The first generation I knew, often had rates of upto 20MB/s read, and upto 8 MB write, which could drop downto 0,25MB/s when some random accessing and random writing was done at the same time.
Todays SSD's would be third generation (seen from Sata perspective), and operate near to perfect.
The only issue is that currently the software does not support defragging SSD's very well.