Toshiba’s New SSD Notebook is the World’s Lightest

Toshiba just dropped the world’s lightest ultra-portable notebook today, a 12.1-inch laptop that weighs in at a svelte 1.72 pounds. How did they get it so light? Well, the started by taking out the DVD drive. If you want to watch movies or load up CDs, you’ll need an external USB drive. They then took out the standard platter-based hard drive and replaced it with a brand-spanking-new Solid State Drive (SSD). What’s a SSD? Well, it’s a flash drive, which doesn’t have any moving parts. In fact, there are no moving parts at all in this computer.

SSD drives are great for a number of reasons. The use less energy than old hard drives, are a lot faster, are quieter, and are more sturdy. So why don’t all computers have them? Well, the 64GB drive in the new Toshiba notebook is about as big as they come, and at that size we’re talking about a pretty expensive drive. But when the SSD market drops in the next few years, look for those old, noisy, platter-based HDDs to go the way of the Dodo and SSDs to take over completely. This new Toshiba is just a glimpse into the future.

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