Several people have asked about when we will offer solid state—or flash-based—hard drives. User reg submitted it on IdeaStorm, and there are several related ideas about these drives as well. Today, we're selling them on our ultra-mobile notebook the Latitude D420 and the D620 ATG semi-rugged notebooks. We will also offer these drives across our entire next-generation notebook line.

Think of these solid state drives as an alternative to the hard drives commonly used in systems today. If you've used a digital camera, a flash memory-based MP3 player, or a USB drive, you've used this technology before. The 1.8-inch drive will initially be available in a 32GB capacity. SanDisk is the initial supplier of the new solid state drives.

Why should you care? These flash-based drives have several advantages over traditional mechanical hard drives:

• Better reliability - Big improvement here. No moving parts means less drive failures.
• Improved performance - These drives offer better overall performance and faster boot times.
• Less noise - Again, no moving parts is a good thing.

The press release has more data (and more legal disclaimers) that quantify the kind of improvements these drives offer.

These flash-based drives are available today as an option for Latitude D420 and D620 ATG customers in the United States, Canada and Latin America. They will be offered in Europe and Asia soon. List price on the 32GB drive is $549.