Sony Corp. will replace hard disks with flash memory when it launches its Vaio UX90 laptop next week. This will make the model one of the first on the market to use flash memory in place of magnetic storage.

Flash, for long, has been looked upon as a potential replacement for hard-disk drives as it is lighter, more silent, offers faster data access and uses less power. Price has proved to be an obstacle so far, with the cost per bit of flash storage still more expensive than hard-disk drives.

The Vaio UX90 will come with 16GB of flash memory storage in place of the 30GB hard-disk drive on the original model. It will cost around $1,805, making it about $344 more expensive than the disk-based model, and will go on sale in Japan on July 3.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. launched a couple of PCs with flash storage earlier this month. The Q30 laptop and Q1 ultra mobile PC both use Samsung's "solid state disk," which packs 32GB of NAND flash memory into a case the same size as a 1.8-inch hard-disk drive.