It appears that Hewlett-Packard is the latest manufacturer to make a move to notebooks that use solid state drives (SSD) instead of traditional hard drives. Sony, Fujitsu and Dell already have confirmed such plans.
While HP is not quite ready to bring such a notebook to market, they are apparently working on an SSD-based lightweight notebook aimed at business travelers. If HP decides to offer it, it could cost around US$3,000 with much of the cost being due to the SSD. Today, a comparable SSD to a US$70 hard drive costs US$600. According to HP spokesman Mike Hockey, HP does not feel that this is a cost-effective solution for customers but When we believe there is a benefit to customers, we will bring it to the market.
At least one analyst predicts that with falling prices, SSD-equipped notebooks could make up over a quarter of the market by 2011.