SanDisk Vaulter: not quite an SSD

Do you want to dramatically speed up boot times on your laptop but can't quite stomach the idea of swapping out your mechanical hard drive for an SSD? Sure, you could go the hybrid hard drive route or you could take advantage of Vista's ReadyBoost feature. But here comes what looks to be an even better solution: a small flash drive that plugs into your laptop's PCIe port and holds just your OS. That's exactly what SanDisk's Vaulters are, 8GB and 16GB drives that work in parallel with your existing hard drive by "pre-controlling the distribution of storage data between [the Vaulter] and the hard drive." Details are still a bit sketchy, though we know that the Vaulter will appear as an additional drive in Windows and that Mac support is "coming soon." SanDisk plans to sell these little guys to OEM partners first but hopes to sell direct to the consumer eventually.

For more on the Vaulter:
- see this Gizmodo article