Apple has reduced the cost of an SSD-based MacBook Air by around AU$700.
Yesterday, you would have paid a AU$1,409 premium for a MacBook Air with a solid-state hard drive, but Apple has reduced that premium to AU$769. It's also now cheaper to upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz, AU$270 instead of AU$430, on either the flash model or the one with the standard hard drive.
PC companies have been interested in flash memory hard drives for some time, but it's not clear how well they are selling. Using flash memory instead of moving parts to store data improves the reliability of the system; hard drive failures are one of the most common problems experienced by notebook users.
However, there have been reports that suggest SSDs may be no more reliable than traditional hard drives.
It's still very expensive to choose a flash drive over a regular hard drive, and potential customers might not be able to justify spending that extra AU$769. Reliability is important, but so is price, and recent news that won't help sell them as an upgrade option.
The MacBook Air with a solid-state hard drive now costs AU$3,538 (down from AU$$4,338).
