[mathew_m]

I was just reading a rumor at Powerbook Central about Flash memory being used possibly in a iBook. Why not? A flash based 'nanobook' would require less battery power and a thinner enclosure. Also lose the optical drive and Steve would have a really cool "...and one last thing".

Think about these specs:

12" 1280x854 widescreen (smaller dimensions for better battery life)
1.6 ghz Yonah single core (scale it down to 15 watts)
15 or 20 gig Flash memory
512 ram w/ option of 1 gig (non user upgradeable to keep small form factor)
built in battery that would be rated at 5 hours
2 USB 2.0
no firewire (sorry guys but this is a consumer model)
AE and bluetooth
Black or white versions available

Size wise? less than 1/2 a pound and a 1/4" thick!

Yeah a lot of you will complain about the lack of storage and no optical. They're going to update .Mac so for those with desktop's you'll be able to access files from where ever there's a WiFi hotspot. This is not a laptop for those who want desktop replacements but for those who want something stylish, small, thin and sexy...just like the iPod Nano!

[slugslugslug]

Notebooks with flash instead of hard drives are not happening this month. I think the big flash manufacturers are touting the possibility of flash as a HDD replacement sometime in 2007. Maybe. That story was probably referring to Intel's Robson technology, which I admittedly don't understand very well, except that the idea is to strategically use a NAND memory cache in addition to HDD. The NAND would somehow speed up boot time and app launching, maybe because access would be faster immediately after power-up than a HDD, which needs to start physically moving stuff around.

I gotta say, though, I think as many folks here would love the no optical as complain about it, but if they do that, they may as well make the thing even smaller, like 10".