Disk drive vendors are doubling the capacity of drives every 12 to 18 months, but 's data indicates that the average storage requirements of users increase in a more linear way. And, while HD video can drive a huge swing in storage requirements, the advent of on-line libraries and storage services tend to even out the trends, McGregor said.

According to In-Stat, SSD prices have been dropping 60% year over year. Currently, the price of consumer-grade SSD costs from $2 to $3.45 per gigabyte, with hard drives going for about 38 cents per gigabyte, according to and iSuppli Corp.

"Two years ago, SSDs cost $17.50 per gigabyte, so it's obvious that consumer NAND flash memory will soon be a true contender to hard disk drives -- it's just not there yet," Gartner analyst said. "I think you need to get to 128GB for around $200, and that's going to happen around 2010. Also, the industry needs to effectively communicate why consumers or enterprise users should pay more for less storage."

Intel Corp.'s and Micron's upcoming SSDs are be based on 32Gbit chip technology. The companies are expected to be the first to break the $1 per gigabyte barrier with their consumer SSD products, which will cost about 99 cents a gigabyte, according to , an analyst at Objective Analysis.

Klein argued that using an SSD in its native state, as NAND chips on a board without an enclosure, will reduce cost, weight, power use and space.