News 

Apple has also reduced the price of the SSD option for the 1.6GHz model to £389. The standard, hard drive (HDD) equipped version is unchanged at £1,199.

The cut in SSD prices follows falls of up to 25% in the trade price of the nand flash memory used in the drives, but DRAMeXchange does not anticipate further falls as the 3G iPhone and new low-cost laptops increases demand.

SSDs have generally enjoyed a good press since they first began appearing in laptops a couple of years ago: they enable faster

ADVERTISEMENT

startup and read times, are quieter than HDDs, generate less heat and are more physically durable, since they have no moving parts.

But contrary to initial assumptions they don't appear to consume less power. Tests by the respected Tom's Hardware website found that the opposite is true.

"We've looked at almost a dozen different flash SSDs from seven vendors over the last few months, and measured acceptable or sometimes even disappointing power requirements with most flash SSDs," it reports.

The reason appears to be that SSDs require power to be supplied at all time and have no power saving mechanism, while HDDs rarely need full power, and spin down whenever they are not being accessed.

However tests on the MacBook Air have found that the SSD version can have a longer battery life, though these findings are far from universal.