Although solid-state technology has already begun to wink at portable gadget manufacturers, such as laptops, mobile phones and most of all, portable MP3 players, they are still a borderline product between the actual and the future technology.

Micron Technologies have already revealed their new line of solid-state drives that function like normal HDDs and require no extra adapters of hardware changes for their usage in a notebook. These SSDs store data on NAND memory chips, rather than HDDs spinning platters.

The DRAM and NAND giant has announced that they will start mass-manufacturing solid-state drives in the first quarter of 2008. The storage capacity would range between 32 and 64 GB - less than half the nowadays notebooks provide, but more than enough for business use, according to Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron. SSDs are ideal for use within notebooks as they are energy-efficient and feature great access timings, that would allow the device to switch from sleep to fully operational in less time.

As any innovative technology products, the SSDs are expected to be overpriced for starters. Although Micron refused to talk prices, the drives are expected to cost a few hundred dollars and moving from a 160 GB hard-drive to a 64 GB solid-state storage would pluck some $1000 out of your pocket. Considering the notebook price, the final score is not really what they call "a bargain".

Things are alleged to change towards the end of 2008, as solid state-drive makers are supposed to incorporate multilevel cell flash chips in the drives. Currently, this is not possible, because the chips aren't as reliable as single-level cell memory, but the technology is continually perfecting and the multilevel chips feature small enough error rates to allow them to be used in SSDs.

Experts consider that notebooks would follow in the MP3 players' footsteps: at first they came with 1.8-inch hard drives, but then they have moved to flash storage. "With MP3 players, it was easy. You just turn it sideways and quote the battery life", said Joseph Unsworth, an analyst at Gartner.