[sombragris]

I think a factor in Optane's demise was dishonesty on the part of low-end laptop manufacturers.

You were a poor student looking for an entry-level cheap laptop and saw a lot of models with 4GB [RAM] "memory" and suddenly there was this one model with "20 GB memory" for the same price. Seemed attractive to the regular guy, but this in fact was 4GB RAM + 16 GB Optane non-volatile storage (and maybe a paltry 32 GB SSD for the rest). Optane would be treated as a drive for storing the Windows OS.

That conflation of Optane storage as "memory", hinting that this was equal to RAM, turned many people against it once they fell victims to that bait-and-switch.

[simulator5g]

I never bought one because I only saw Optane in these low spec configurations. I didn't see any use for a tiny SSD. I only learned more about it after it was discontinued.