News 

SSDs offer several advantages over traditional hard disks, being lighter, quieter, less power-hungry and more robust because they contain no moving parts.

This makes them an ideal upgrade for notebook manufacturers, but until recently they have been prohibitively expensive.

They are still far from competitive with traditional hard disks, but the price has now dropped to the point where the advantages may be worth the money for high-end business users.

A 64GB NAND flash drive will be an optional upgrade for the Compaq 2510p and 2710p series, available in the UK from November. The exact price of the upgrade has not been released, although US reports suggest it could cost as much as £500.

The drives will be manufactured by Samsung, who also create the flash drives used in Apple's iPods.