[Brad]

Originally Posted by TheWretched The problems with them that I don't like is just the obivous stuff, such as the random changes in data due to temperature and other factors. This sort of thing is the cause of corrupted files, and the reason it's good to reinstall your OS every few months.

Bizarre. In fifteen years of using various computers every day at home, work, school, and travel, I've never experienced this. I've not reinstalled the OS on this computer in nearly a year and I have had zero data integrity problems; even then it wasn't because of any corruption but simply because I wanted to use a new version of the OS (10.4). Maybe at extremes this is a more prominent problem, but it's not for the majority of computing environments. I strongly suspect that if you've had to reinstall your OS, there was another problem at the source.

Originally Posted by TheWretched Also, I've heard it's slower to have to spin the platter so many times to read the data, and uses more energy.

Yes, it's well established that flash memory is faster and uses less power. However, you'll note that traditional drives have gotten relatively smaller, faster, and more energy efficient over the years as well. The platter technology is not stagnating entirely.

Originally Posted by TheWretched This is just from what I've read, so I could be wrong. It just seems so much simpler to have one non-moving solid state storage drive that is not affected by the temperature of the room, is faster, and can hold loads more data. Was what I've read correct, or did I misinterpret it?

You assume that solid state devices are not affected by temperature and store more data. Both assumptions are wrong. Commercial NANDs are generally listed with operating temperatures between 5°C (40°F) and 70°C (160°F). Hard drives have the same operating range. As for storage, you will not find a 200 GB flash drive anywhere. Heck, you can't even find one with a tenth or a twentieth of that capacity.

Originally Posted by TheWretched Also, it seems to me that a spinning platter is to a CD as a solid state HD is to digital music. CDs are basically obsolete already, and hard drives have been around for a while now, so I would just really like a computer with something new, you know?

Your analogy is inherently flawed. A CD is a spinning platter, but digital music is content that can be stored on any medium, solid state HD or otherwise. I'm really not sure what you're trying to say there. Hard drives are old technology? So is the binary logic gate, but it's not going away any time soon.