Notebook manufacturers are facing issues when it comes to SSD deployment, it seems. The power-friendly but money-hungry mass storage units of the future are seeing failure rates higher than expected, with return rates as high as 10 to 20%. This is in comparison to 1 to 2% on traditional drives, leading some to believe that the technology is not yet ready for primetime.

Still other issues are mentioned, such as a lack of performance in certain areas in which the read and write speed of a flash drive can be severely affected. The cost doesn't help with all that, as people don't want to pay a premium for an inferior product.

A lot of people have faith in SSD drives, myself included. There are sure to be growing pains, however, and this is definitely one of them. Hopefully it will encourage manufacturers to improve their development and find other solutions, and that growth of the SSD market isn't slowed due to fear. Flash has changed dramatically in a very short span of time, and ultimately the numerous advantages that a hard drive with no moving parts offers is just too good to pass up.