SanDisk launches new Solid State Drives – The pSSD

Pardon me for asking what may be a stupid question, but why is the Port Interface on the “side” of the device?
Assuming that this device is intended to replace standard 2.5 inch laptop drives (and it looks about that size) surely it would make more sense to put the pin connectors in the same place as they would be on other drives? What is the size of that card? Or am I missing something here?

Looks to me like the entire device is only 2.5″ wide, and about 2″ long. The connector is actually the front of the device. I’d assume by the 4 bolt holes a “caddy” of sorts with go around it to make it fit in a standard bay.

Also that connector looks to me like a standard ribbon connector that will probably plug into the “caddy” somewhere which will have the standard plug on it.

Possibly done so they can make it sata/pata with little to no changes other than a different caddy.

That really doesn’t seem so revolutionary. You can already buy CF cards as fast as that and the same size for under fifty bucks from any major retailer. They already have adapters for those, which also fit microdrives if you want them. The only thing I see that would be better is a larger cache and faster bus bandwidth (judging by all the tiny pins).