More interesting stuff are things like Splashtop
Flash memory is so small, and with speeds and size always on the up and up.
People are often wiring in an internal SD reader and card to boot up the OS quickly.
Asus have gone one stage further, and placed flash on all their motherboards to load Splashtop in about 5 seconds. Splashtop is a cut down Linux OS that does email and browsing. Linux adoption is set to go through the roof. I cannot wait to see MS try and claim a distinction - how many unix folks have been counted just because it was nigh impossible to get a laptop without getting windows as well.
Swap is not a problem on a SSD if you want to dedicate the space. Swap is hardly ever used nowadays, really it is a safety net, so not too much concern over the finite erase write cycles. If you are swapping you have a problem, developers do it all the time, when they are coding, we call it a bug in the main (infinite loops or memory leaks). But of course some operations do use huge amounts of memory; rendering can do it, as well some more complex mathematical operations where gobs of data need to be accessible.
I would certainly give some space to swap if size is not an issue. On a sub 4GB device perhaps not, but at about 16GB I would. And of course it is trivial to get swap on if you think you need it.
The MBR and a limited area for logging is the problem, as is malware dedicated to blowing sections like the MBR on flash devices.
There is not much of difference between SSD and a USB flash drive memory, as far as the erase write cycles go, in my opinion. And the speeds can be slower on a SSD as well.
There is an issue with wear leveling, and replacement with these devices, but in normal operation it will take quite a few years to see the problem. Really you want to be able to replace the devices with ease, that's the ultimate solution and the one I suspect the market would prefer - so, how many admins does it take to replace a bit of flash memory?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
