Solid state drives are used in the enterprise widely, and are common in the new netbooks as well. One prime factor in ssd's is that they are far more shock proof than hdd's, try dropping a hard drive and see how well it works after, do the same drop with an ssd and your data is safe. They have higher average time between failure, near 1,000,000 hours. As for electromagnetic fields, hard drives can be affected by them as well. Put a hdd next to an electric motor and it will be affected as it can slow or stop altogether. The biggest problem I see right now is the price, a 128gb ssd goes for over $400.00. Size for consumers is at about 250 gb, in the enterprise there are 1.5tb and bigger ssd's. Now some great features of ssd's are low power consumption, noiseless operation due to no moving parts, error correction, and they can be encrypted even when removed from their system (laptop or desktop). Plus they have multiple interfaces available: pcmcia, usb, pata, sata, etc. I like the idea of plugging a fast and secure drive into the pcmcia slot my laptop that won't suck power or heat up too much. It all comes down to proper handling, one doesn't leave cd/dvd's laying loose on a desk or the floor, they are kept in cases or folders to protect them. Leave a hard drive loose on a desk or near crt monitors too long and they won't satisfy your needs, so one uses an enclosure of some kind. And you don't leave a memory stick in a usb port all the time through successive reboots (though I have run one through a wash load and it still works flawlessly). Sorry for the long winded rant ;) Peter Kaulback David Grossman wrote: > Actually, I'm very optimistic about the future of solid state hard drives. > As you wrote in your other email, solid state technology is not ready for > prime time. That's true. The technology is too new, so there are bugs in it > now. > > However (and as opposed to CD/DVD technology) the industry is working on > solid state technology and is trying to improve it. That should make a great > deal of difference in the future. > > David Grossman > > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: pcworks-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx >> [mailto:pcworks-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Clint >> Hamilton-PCWorks Admin >> Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 11:01 PM >> To: pcworks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx >> Subject: Re: [PCWorks] Burning CDs >> >> >> Yeah that's because there's nothing to replace it. All those >> flash drives and media cards are sensitive to electromagnetic >> fields. Get too close to one, and your data is fried. That's >> why I use optical media, and media cards, and HD's. There's >> solid state HD's out now, but I think they are just like memory >> cards, too sensitive to EM fields. >> -Clint >> >> God Bless >> Clint Hamilton, Owner >> http://www.OrpheusComputing.com >> http://www.ComputersCustomBuilt.com >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "David Grossman" >> >> Nonetheless, CD/DVD media has withstood the test of time, and >> it is still >> very popular. By now, it should have been replaced by something >> better - and >> less flaky. >> David Grossman ========================= The list's FAQ's can be seen by sending an email to PCWorks-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with FAQ in the subject line. To unsubscribe, subscribe, set Digest or Vacation to on or off, go to //www.freelists.org/list/pcworks . You can also send an email to PCWorks-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with Unsubscribe in the subject line. Your member list settings can be found at //www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi/l=pcworks . Once logged in, you have access to numerous other email options. The list archives are located at //www.freelists.org/archives/pcworks/ . All email posted to the list will be placed there in the event anyone needs to look for previous posts. -zxdjhu-