News

Flash notebooks failing too much

posted on 18 March 2008 11:03

High return rates

IT investment research agency Avian Securities reports that flash drive-equipped notebooks are failing and 20-30 percent of one large manufactuer's output is returned to it for repair or replacement.

Users say that the notebooks are either broken (10-20 percent) or not performing fast enough. Typical return-for-repair rates on hard disk drive (HDD) notebooks are 1 to 2 percent.

On the performance front Avian reports that flash-based notebooks are inferior to HDD ones in streaming video performance.

The belief is that Dell is the affected notebook supplier with Samsung the flash drive manufacturer. Samsung is said to be working on a new drive that has better I/O for small packet sizes such as are seen in Microsoft Outlook.