SSD Drives showing up in laptops

InfoWorld brings news that both Sony and Dell have added solid state drives (SSD) as optional for their respective lines of laptops. For those of you not in the know -- SSD's are essentially large flash drives configured to work within a computer as opposed to simply an outside peripheral device. InfoWorld has a nice description:

As opposed to the traditional HDD (hard disk drive), which relies on spinning discs and read/write heads, the SSD is a flash-based drive that requires no moving parts. As such, it can withstand twice as much force as an HDD, according to Dell impact testing, which also showed that notebook hardware breaks before the drive does.

Those in this professional field likely already have experience with the ruggedness of SSD because AlphaSmart keyboards have been working just fine without hard disk drives for many years. Though AlphaSmarts do not exactly use SSD, they do store all of their programming and applications within system memory and, being bult out of ABS plastic, are extremely rugged. My AlphaSmart 2000 is almost 10 years old and has spent most of that time as a plaything for my rambunctious offspring.