Solid-State Drives May Be Trendy, But Consumers Aren't Buying I

Apple offers MacBook Air buyers the option of purchasing the ultralight notebook with a solid-state drive instead of the more typical hard drive. But solid-state storage is so expensive that few customers are likely to go for it -- and, experts say, it won't be an affordable alternative to hard drive storage for many years.

"Right now, the mainstream for laptops is still very much disk drives," says Joni Clark, senior product marketing manager for Seagate, a company that makes hard drives. "While solid-state drives are a good fit for products like internet tablets and music players ... hard disk drives are still going to be your traditional drive in laptops for many years to come."