"Notebooks with Flash-based hard drives cost a lot and, according to managing partner Avi Cohen at Avian Securities, they don't work very well either," according to CNet.
A large computer manufacturer is getting around 20 percent to 30 percent of the Flash-based notebooks it is shipping sent back because of failure rates and performance that simply isn't meeting customer expectations, the firm stated in a report on Monday. Avian gathered this information on a recent swing through Asia.
Cohen doesn't say which manufacturer, but the author points out that Dell (see update below) is the main manufacturer to ship Flash-based systems in volume.
It looks like another case of industry hype finally meeting reality. There are some advantages to solid state drives (SSDs) for "road warriors," especially improved battery life and robustness (the ability to survive being dropped). However, for most people, SSDs deliver much less storage (32GB or 64GB instead of 160GB or more) for a lot more money.
The same money would be better spent on a notebook with more RAM and a faster graphics chip.
Update: According to Engadget:
Dell claims that the 20 to 30% failure and return rates for SSD laptops cited by Avian's report "don't even vaguely resemble what's happening in our business." Dell says it wasn't contacted in the study, and that "global reliability data shows that SSD drives are equal to or better than traditional hard disk drives we've shipped."
Thanks to techboy66 for the link.
The Engadget quotes are taken from a Direct2Dell post, Recent Opinion on SSD Failure Rates Fails to Include the Facts, which would have been an even more useful link ;-)
