Solid-state drives for MacBook Airs are hard sells—for now

When the Apple MacBook Air first arrived at Consumer Reports, more than a few of us here were really impressed with its size and (lack of) weight. Moreover, Apple still managed to cram some really nifty features in such a thin and light laptop. (See "MacBook Air: First impressions" or click on the video player at right for more details on the MacBook Air's features.)

Better still: Elements of the Air are making their way into siblings. The new MacBook models announced today by Apple, for instance, will have "multi-touch" touchpads with "gesture controls"—capabilities first introduced in Apple's iPhone Touch iPod.

[Feb. 27, 2008 UPDATE: Apple's innovative gesture controls—"pinching" to "shrink" an on-screen image, for example—were unveiled with last year's introduction of the iPhone. —Ed.]

One of the more interesting feature that some of our readers have asked about is the solid-state drive (SSD) option. Such drives use flash memory—similar to those used in digital cameras and MP3 players—to store files and programs.

Is an SSD-equipped Air faster than one with the standard 80-gigabyte hard drive? Our preliminary tests of the MacBook Air with a 64-gigabyte SSD says "yes." BUT, only for certain tasks. (See our free report, "Apple MacBook Air: First Look", on ConsumerReports.org for more details.)

Is it worth the $1,000 premium? Unless you have a lot of money, probably not. But it's interesting to note an Air with a SSD has a lower price tag than some other portables with SSDs, say Sony's TZ line of Vaio notebooks. (We tested a Sony Vaio VGN-TZ191N/XC last year and found similar "mixed performance" issues.)

Will other MacBooks and PC notebooks soon come with cheaper, larger and faster flash drives? We can only hope so.

—Paul Eng

Comments

[james braselton]

HI THERE WHEN WILL WE GET OUR HANDS ON ANY SSD COMPUTER OR GAMING CONSOLES