One of the advantages of owning a netbook – beyond its portability – is the extended battery life achieved by using newer solid state hard drive technology. Soon netbook owners will be able to enjoy that long lasting battery goodness without having to sacrifice on storage.

Netbooks have increasingly taken the spotlight from their slightly paunchier cousin, the laptop, in the last couple of years. They offer increased mobility through a smaller form factor that is attractive to many professionals that are always on the go.

The other benefit of netbooks over laptops is a much longer battery life. By using solid state drives with no spinning disks, netbook makers have doubled the effective battery life of these portable machines.

So far the only disadvantage of the netbook has been the hard drive capacity. Solid state drive technology is newer and larger drives are just beginning to be available for consumers.

Intel’s 160 GB solid state drive is still a bit bulky at 2.5 inches. However in a few weeks it will follow up this release with a 1.8 inch drive that will match the 160 GB capacity.

It won’t be long before we see solid state drives become more common in workstations and servers as well. As capacity increases to match the needs of these devices, we should see solid state drives popping up in all types of computers

Samsung has already begin producing a 256 GB solid state drives. Toshiba is expected to release a 512 GB solid state drive by June of 2009.

Solid state drives are quieter and use less electricity than standard hard drive technology. However, the price of these greener drives may need to come down before they can fully replace hard drives.

Adding a solid state drive to a laptop currently boosts the price $500 to $1,000 dollars for a laptop. So while 2009 might not be the year everyone switches to solid state, it certainly can’t be much longer.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 9:57 am under Storage, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Jeyes.
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