No moving parts - solid state drives

We have had several cases of hard drive failure. In some cases it has meant total loss of the data.
Conventional drives are not "hard" - in the sense of being robust and reliable - and the name comes from the days of floppy drives. The magnetic medium which spins around is made of highly polished aluminium or glass, turning at extremely high speed; some reach the equivalent of 170 mph!
Great for fast access since there is a fast moving head going back and forth just a minute distance above the disk. But a knock or jolt for the laptop could mean the end of the hard drive and the data within.
ScanDisk unveiled their latest product at the Consumer Electronics Show 2009 . In a year when attendance was down and with no major goodies catching the media's attention, this little device made the headlines.
In her CES report , Ilse Jurrien states:
"The new SanDisk pSSD-P2 and SanDisk pSSD-S2 SSDs have capacity and performance for more full-featured netbooks which require a robust operating system. Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs), SanDisk’s new second generation module has a SATA interface to meet new netbook design requirements. The SATA interface offers a significant boost in performance rendering these SSDs faster than HDDs in critical aspects. Booting and launching applications takes just half the time of an HDD."

In considering the specification for ultamobiles for student use, we have to ensure SSD technology for the hard drives. Even though SSDs may not match hard drives in ultimate capacity at the moment, SSDs are being produced with storage sufficient for our "in the clouds" era - after all ultramobiles are also called "netbooks"....