Flash-based Laptops Have High Return Rate: Analyst

Flash-based or solid-state drives (SSDs) are the "in-thing," but they have a very high premium when compared to standard laptops. One need only go to the Apple Store and take a MacBook Air (MBA) with a standard hard drive and replace it with an SSD to see a $999 price difference, for example.

Despite the price, many are opting for SSDs, because of lower power use, the "silence factor," and the ability to stand up to drops (though with accelerometers in many laptops that's not as much an issue any longer). What about overall reliability, though? A report by managing partner Avi Cohen at Avian Securities casts a pall over that subject.

According to Cohen, 10 - 20% SSD laptops shipping from a "large manufacturer" are being returned for hardware failures. The failure rate for hard-drive based laptops is 1 - 2%.

At the same time, other laptops are being returned when people discover that SSDs can't match standard hard drive performance for some disk-intensive applications. No question though, boot time is improved.

So who's this large manufacturer? Probably not Apple (they only starting shipping the MBA recently, right - and you can bet a large number of MBA returns would be big news). Speculation and research would point to Dell, and thus Sandisk, the OEM of its SSDs.

Price-wise, SSDs still are too expensive for most. Questions over reliability and performance, like this, probably indicates that most consumers - not all, there are still plenty who want to be bleeding-edge and have the $$$ to do so - would be better served with a standard hard drive, and upgrading the notebook with a better CPU, more RAM and an extra battery - if they really want to spend that extra money.