HP to offer SSDs on business laptops

HP has announced that, starting next month, it will be begin offering solid-state drives as an option for all of its professional series laptops, becoming the latest PC manufacturer to jump on the SSD bandwagon. The company's first NAND flash offering will be a whopping 64GB SSD (presumably from Samsung), as an option for its Compaq 2710p, 2510p, 6910p, and 8000 series notebook computers.

Flash-based solid-state drives for notebook computers may be on the verge of entering the mainstream computing environment, paving the way for lighter, cooler-running, and less battery-hungry notebooks. However, SSD capacities currently lag significantly behind traditional platter-based hard drives, and are considerably more expensive on a per-gigabyte basis.

Similar to what Dell and Alienware announced earlier this month, choosing the SSD option will add around $1,000 to the cost of HP’s laptops, but the company expects the cost to come down as SSDs gain acceptance in the marketplace and volumes increase.