Memory goes solid ; SSD memories are making their way into laptops. Should you go for one right now?

Solid State Drives (SSDs) are appearing in almost everythingtoday from music players to phones and even laptops. In fact, if youwere to buy a decently specified laptop today, you will get theoption of choosing an SSD instead of a traditional electro-mechanical drive you know, the type that houses a rapidly spinningdisc and a pointy needle, and is pretty much an industry standard.By contrast, an SSD houses several embedded memory chips.

Now, salesmen in stores will try and tell you a lot of stuffabout why you should spend up to Rs 10,000 more to go solid. Thebiggest reason, according to engineers, is that the fewer movingparts there are in a product, the more reliable it is, simplybecause there are fewer things that can potentially go wrong. An SSDhas no moving parts.

That doesn't mean that SSDs are a no brainer. There is the minorissue of SSDs costing more in fact, lots more. For instance, Intel'sX25-M (34-namometer), generally considered the best SSD availableout there costs $440 (Rs 21,000) for a 160 gigabyte capacity model.That works out to Rs 132 per gigabyte. This does not sound like muchwhen you pick up USB flash drives for upwards of Rs 500 for agigabyte. But when you consider that a traditional electro-mechanical drive one with 320 gigabytes of storage, which is bog-standard laptop equipment nowadays costs around Rs 4,000 (for twicethe memory, remember), you might want to question the rationale ofan SSD.

Still, SSDs are getting cheaper. Apple, for example, constantlyincreases the capacity of the SSD-filled iPod Touch ever so oftenwithout a price hike. Plus, lower capacity SSDs, such as those oniPods, have much lower consumption, and they're also a lot lighter.That said, do not expect regular hard drives to give up their costadvantage anytime soon.

However, SSDs' main advantage, because of the lack of movingparts, is that they can access data far faster. They are also farmore 'tolerant' than regular hard-drives they have a highertemperature range and don't need fancy laptop body-shells to protectthem. In fact, if you subtract the optical disc drive, a laptop witha SSD will have no moving parts at all. Which is why the USmilitary, the world's single-largest consumer of tech-wizardry, hasfallen in love with them.

Yet, unless you are the sort that really needs to have the latestand greatest piece of technology, or you work in an extremely hotand hostile environment, you really don't need an SSD in your laptopjust yet. Regular electromechanical drives are still incrediblyreliable given the amount of abuse they take. And the price premiumis just not worth it right now.