I should get a laptop soon. I mean, there's the consideration of PC versus Mac, but that added consideration of the power consumption. And the biggest power sap in laptops is the 2.5" hard drive. That spinning spindle and twitching aperture arm draw a lot of juice. What if we could start using solid state storage on mobile computers.

Addonics Technologies is hoping just that with their latest range of CF (Compact Flash) Hard Drive Adapters. This little adapter will allow any laptop or note book computer (I wonder if it'll work with a desktop system?) to be converted into a solid state computer. The adapters come in a few flavors while boasting perfect compatibility with Windows, Mac, Linux and Sun Solaris operating systems. And because it's only a hardware bridge (no extra software and or drivers to install, no extra system bloat required), it looks and acts just like a regular IDE or SATA hard drive.

“With these new Addonics adapters any equipment, such as a notebook computer, that uses a 2.5″ IDE or SATA hard drive can be easily converted to use the more reliable CF media. Once installed, the CF card appears as an ordinary hard drive to the system BIOS and operating system and can also be configured as a boot device”. said an Addonics spokesperson said.

The greatest benefit for this being that Compact Flash seek times can put a platter pulsing hard drive to shame. Write times however, can be less than stellar. But this could help develop the portable computing market made make ultra mobile PCs evermore present in the marketplace. The cost is pretty nice too. There is a single slot IDE unit that rings in at about $24.99 USD, and a dual slotter IDE adapter for $29.99. The SATA version only comes in a single slot design and costs $35.99 US. And Compact Flash is getting cheaper by the day, at about $50 bucks for 4 Gigs, if you sniff around a bit.

Hmmm, maybe I could try building a small CF based PC, and just swap out different CF cards for the different OS's I want to run. This ones for Linux, this one for Windows, and this one for BSD. I could have multiple distros configured for different functions. It might make a great web surfing client. And if the install ever gets corrupted or infected, just re-flash from my main rig. Sweet!