After a recent blog comment saying that I was once a Sony fan (but no longer am), I just mysteriously found myself looking at a page on the Sony Style website, admiring the various models in the sexy little TZ range.

One thing struck me – the ‘top of the range’ model comes with a tiny but expensive solid state hard drive. It’s not just Sony – the likes of Dell offer something similar in their ultra-portables. Even the cheap (but not as cheap as it used to be) Eee PC uses a solid state drive.

And what’s wrong with that? They’re mechanically robust, and flash memory is now cleverly produced so that it doesn’t ‘wear out’ as quickly as the 1st generation products did. Plus prices are rapidly tumbling. It’s great, isn’t it?

Well, actually, no it isn’t. At least, not in one important respect: The great thing about old-skool hard drives is that they make noises, and they vibrate a tiny little bit. So when a computer is booting, or loading a big application like PhotoShop, you know it’s actually doing something. You hear it and you feel it.

With solid-state hard drives that changes – you click on an icon and then nothing seems to be happening until several seconds later your application suddenly springs to life. It’s really disconcerting not having the audible and tactile feedback. I find the rattle and hum of a hard drive a bit like the ‘click click’ of the indicator relay in a car – it tells you that things are working. In fact, this is a legal requirement with cars, and on models where the actual relay can’t be heard from the driver’s seat the manufacturer has to fit a repeater inside the cabin. I think laptop manufacturers should take a leaf out of this book and do the same – where they fit solid state drives they should also emit a very quiet HDD-type noise when the drive is being accessed. And if they added an ultra-tiny and only just noticeable vibrate facility too then it would be even better.

Speaking of cars, I nearly got run over by a tw@t in a hybrid the other day. When travelling through the city, on electric power, they are pretty much silent, so you don’t notice them sneaking up on you. So as well as requesting laptop manufacturers to provide drive-access feedback, I’d like to suggest that hybrid and electric cars be fitted with an external speaker that makes a petrol engine-like noise. It could even spurn a whole industry similar to the ringtone business, where people could download Ferrari, Lambo, Aston, etc. noises for their cars.

And what about that sexy little TZ Sony? Once upon a time my wallet would have been twitching, but not any more. Sony products (and particularly Sony support) have hurt me too many times. That love affair is well and truly over.