Rumors flew across the Net by the past few weeks predicting that Apple would turn the computer market upside down by announcing an $800 laptop.

It was not to be. According to Ars Technica (http://ArsTechnica.com), the rumor began with an anonymous tip to The Inquisitr (www.inquisitr.com) and was never part of Apple’s planned announcement that week, which included many upgrades on the company’s already expensive laptop line.

About the only tidbit for wallet-conscious potential MacBook owners was the lowered price for the MacBook White (2.1 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 gigabytes RAM, 120 GB hard drive) from $1,099 to $999.

That’s still $200 too much.

Never mind that you can get a Windows laptop for $500 with the same specs as the MacBook White. But it won’t come with Apple’s OS X operating system.

Executives at Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway, ASUS and Acer no doubt breathed a huge sigh of relief upon

learning that Apple decided not to challenge them on price.

However, one thing Apple did with its high-priced laptop line was compose solid-state disk drives more affordable.

Solid-state drives — which use flash memory technology to store details without the traditional spinning platters of magnetic hard-disk drives — are the latest thing in portable computing. They’re often faster than regular hard drives, use less energy and generally have longer lives.

But they’re expensive. Adding a 128 GB solid state drive to a 13-inch MacBook ups the $1,599 base price by $600.

I’ve been thinking about flash-based storage on PCs for months now, and I decided to convert one of my systems to solid-state storage to see how it works.

How much did I spend? $30.

Instead of purchasing a pricey solid-state drive (64 GB models are now selling for $170), I took advantage of recent drops…

Original post by dhiram