The laptop buyer's burden: HDD or SSD?
They are the next ballyhooed storage technology: Solid state drives (SSDs) are faster and more energy efficient than their popular siblings, hard disk drives (HDDs). Consequently, many vendors have been touting SSDs as potential replacements for HDDs in laptop systems.
However, reports of the death of HDDs may be a bit premature. While SSDs offer many potential long-term benefits, customers do take a sharp, short-term hit in the pocketbook when they go with SSD options, which generally cost more per GB of memory. Also, because of the nascent nature of SSDs, their functionality and reliability can be sketchy at times.
The end result is that SSDs now represent a miniscule portion of the drives used in laptops. While some experts anticipate a rapid shift in buyer preferences, others are skeptical that they will make significant mark within the next few years.
