New Laptops May Boot Instantly, Thanks to Faster Memory

Apple's newest MacBook Air laptop boots up in mere seconds, thanks to its use of advanced flash memory instead of a standard, slower hard drive. And that memory format, used in so-called solid-state drives, could soon become a standard in PCs, as manufacturers follow Apple's lead and warm to the benefits of flash storage.

Increasingly used in smartphones, the chips used in flash storage are still expensive -- but market leaders Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, SanDisk and Intel are investing billions of dollars in cutting-edge facilities to boost production.

That will help meet growing demand and make solid-state drives, which are made of flash memory chips instead of mechanical parts, more mainstream by 2012 as prices decline, analysts say. Game fans and other tech-savvy consumers are increasingly buying off-the-shelf solid-state drives, or SSDs, because they are quicker, more rugged and less prone to fail.