Lenovo bets on solid state drives

Lenovo's latest notebook will only be available with a solid state hard drive

Lenovo is standardising on solid state hard drives (SSDs) for its new high-end laptops.

The company launched its thinnest ever notebook today, the X300, which will only be available with a SSD drive, currently a 64GB model.

This storage configuration not only cuts down on power consumption, but helps drive the market for solid state technology, according to the Chinese hardware giant.

"Why SSD only? It's a bet," said David McQuarrie, executive director of Lenovo's European notebook business.

"Every company bets on things and with SSD you do not get costs falling unless you force the market. We think the cost differential is going to fall significantly in the next six months so it is SSD only on this range."

The new laptop is 18.5mm thick and weighs in at 1.33kg. McQuarrie denied that the X300 is a competitor to Apple's Air laptop, insisting that it is aimed at a completely different market.

Lenovo claims a battery life of 6.5 hours when the device is fitted with its optical drive and 10 hours without it.

"That's all day power," said McQuarrie. "Compare that to [Apple's Air laptop] launched last month that doesn't even give you all morning power."

Lenovo has achieved this long battery life by giving the laptop a relatively low speed Core 2 Duo SL7100 processor and using LED backlighting on the screen.

The SSD technology will also help with this, McQuarrie said, as well as providing much better data security in the event of the laptop being dropped.

The X300 is available now and the base specification system will cost around €2,000.