The hard-drive is the only mechanical part left in today's laptops and therefor the component that is most likely to breakdown (I should know since I "killed" 2-3 hard drives in the last couple of years on my laptop). Flash memory makers hope to retire the platter based hard drive with the flash chips that power the new solid state drives (SSDs). The new drives are thin, and include near-instantaneous seek times (the throughput rates are really limited by the bus instead of the mechanics of the drive). The consume less power, generate less hear and are silent which makes them great for laptops. Notebook makers start now to offer some of their laptops with these drives for better reliability and mobility (for example: Dell ATG, Samsung Q1 Ultra and Sony TZ Series).
How faster are these drives? A normal hard drive at a speed of 5,400 rpm has an average access time of 17 milliseconds. SSD has an average seek time of 0.11 milliseconds! What does it mean? If you have such drive as your main laptop drive, you'll see the machine boot the BIOS and operating system more quickly and of course open applications much faster.
The main problem today (like with any new technology) is capacity and prices. Right now, the typical SSD is either 32GB or 64GB, whereas most laptops today come with at least 100GB hard drive. For the privilege of a third capacity of the SSD drive you will pay an extra $350, but prices are expected to drop in the near future.
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