Toshiba has announced that it is soon to be including solid-state NAND (NOT AND, as opposed to NOT OR) drives in the notebooks it sells in Japan, according to Austin Modine at Channel Register. These multi-cell wonders can store 3 or more bits of data per cell, as opposed to the conventional 1, leading to a much greater storage capacity.

The sacrifice in transfer speed and higher power consumption will surely only be a temporary thing, and the benefits far outweigh the negatives. The wear-levelling alone (where data erasing and re-writes are spread ‘across the cells so no single sector prematurely fails because of a high concentration of erase cycle’) is a boon that will add life to the laptops it is included in.

The fact that solid-cells have no moving parts to break down, make no noise when working and consume little power means that it shouldn’t be long before other manufacturers catch on and start putting them in their laptops too. But always remember that Toshiba got there first. Again.