by Brooke Crothers
Consumers prefer light to heavy. Thin to thick. And that's why more laptops will begin to imitate the internals of the iPad.
Reason #1--Flash memory: The iPad (not to mention the iPhone) is a major force driving flash memory development and production. Apple obviously has a thing for flash (so much so that headlines periodically appear about its ravenous appetite for this silicon delicacy).
Laying down a solid-state drive (aka flash drive) on the main system board can alone make for a much smaller, lighter design (see photos). Want more proof? Just look at this teardown of the 2011 MacBook Pro to see the relatively large size of a standard magnetic hard disk drive...[continued]
