So what's the fuss about these technologies

NAND (which stands for "Not and") is a type of flash memory technology that excels at reading, writing and erasing data from flash memory. NOR (short for "Not or") is the other type of flash-based storage and is better suited for retrieving data from smaller devices like cell phones. NAND's strengths make it ideally suited for larger-storage drives.

In early 2006, Samsung Corp. announced the development of a 32 GB Nand Drive that it touted as a "hard-drive" killer, and both Samsung and Sony Corp.

Recent reports have indicated that solid-state hard drives are being built with data throughput capacity of up to 62 mb/sec This is close to 100 times faster than conventional hard drives.

The downside of NAND drives is that these tiny drives cost upwards of $500 or $600.