SSDs (solid state drives) are great. They’re shock resistant, consume less power, produce less heat, and have very fast seek times. If you have a computer with an SSD, such as an Eee PC, there are some tweaks you can make to increase performance and extend the life of the disk.

Back in the day, Netbooks ran Linux and packed solid-state drives. But Windows XP and big hard disk drives have prevailed.

Want a portable or mobile storage unit that will never fail due to G-forces or “crashing?“. Looking for a highly reliable and fast random access storage medium to use for your most important data? Do you have $500-$1500 in spare change lying around? Then Solid State Drives (SSDs) are for you.

Hackers no longer have to resort to their own devices to get Windows on Asus's Eee PC. For those unfamiliar with the machine, the Eee comes in $399 and $499 models, both with seven-inch screens and no moving parts (a 4GB or 8GB solid state hard drive replaced the usual spinning disk). And people are gobbling up like they're going out of style.

Dell is announcing colorful new Inspiron netbook, laptop and desktop updates. Customers can choose between 120- and 160-GB hard drives and a 16GB solid state drive (with both the XP and Ubuntu operating systems) or an 8GB solid state drive with the Ubuntu OS.

Over the past few months, the concept of green computing has become all the rage. But the undeniable fact is that often times with this low impact approach to computing, we end up sacrificing actual computing power, which makes this a tough sell for many. Frankly, to me it just feels like a marketing ploy. Could this perception be felt by others as well?

My father recently retired a 1-Ghz AMD computer with 1 Gbyte of RAM that he'd built from mail-ordered parts. He'd dropped the cash for a new Dell with Vista, which he likes quite a lot (no grousing, please, it happens), and let me have the old machine. My first move: Wipe it clean, install Linux, and prepare it for an exercise in "hand-me-down computing."

NorhTec has announced a tablet computer that will cost just $300, run Ubuntu Linux on a 1GHz SoC (system-on-chip), and operate via eight AA batteries. The "Gecko Info Pad" will include an 8.9-inch touchscreen display, 8GB of solid state storage, and needs no external power brick, the company says.

This month we take a look at a number of small form factor PCs that either come with Linux or would make a perfect fit for your favorite Linux distro. Each of the computers mentioned takes up very little space, but all deliver plenty of computing performance to handle everything from basic web browsing to watching videos.