And I don’t mean that people are unwilling to fork out the $1300 for the MacBook Air SSD upgrade. What I mean is that these solid state drives are actually prone to failure. This is terribly ironic, considering that one of the supposed advantages to a SSD (over HDD) is that it’s supposed to be more reliable. That’s in addition to being faster and more energy-efficient.

An Avian Securities analyst is saying that 10 to 20 percent of flash-based notebooks are being sent back because of a technical failure. This is from an unnamed “large computer manufacturer” and we’d imagine that the failure is happening with other manufacturers as well. Going further, “still more are being sent back for not matching purchasers’ expectations for a total of 20 to 30 percent of SSD-based notebooks getting the heave-ho.”

This can’t possibly bode well for the companies that produce these flash-based drives. SSDs were supposed to extend our batteries and improve boot times, not produce an epic fail! For comparison, the return rate for standard hard drive failures is about 1-2%.