Laptop Thoughts: The Intel SSD 310: Honey, I Shrunk The Hard Drive!

"The 310 isn't about performance, rather form factor. The SSD in Apple's new MacBook Air is just the beginning - OEMs are beginning to shed the limits of traditional hard drive form factors as SSDs don't need to house a circular platter. The mSATA interface is physically a mini PCIe connector (similar to what you'd see with a WiFi card in a notebook) but electrically SATA. The result is something very compact. The full sized mSATA 310 measures 50.8mm x 29.85mm and is less than 4.85mm thick. Total weight? Less than 10 grams."

This is fantastic to see - one of the most impressive things about the Macbook Air that I was testing is that Apple managed to cram a 50 Watt Hour battery inside that incredibly slim chassis. One of the reasons they were able to do that is because they crammed basically the entire laptop other than the battery in the upper-third portion of the bottom chassis; the rest was left for the battery. And how did they accomplish that feat? By taking the SSD out of the traditional 2.5" chassis and putting the chips into a small daughterboard. It looks like other laptop vendors are going to be following in Apple's path, which is great. Bring on the choice!