Wii Flash Memory is Next-Gen
Solid State refers to any type of storage that requires no moving parts. Hard drives, optical drives, and disk drives, all require moving parts; thus, they are not solid state. Examples of solid state storage would be flash memory and ROM, which typically use much less power than hard drives. The N64 was the last console to use Solid State.
In the computer world, there is a term called "Moore’s Law". It’s not really a law at all but an observation made a few decades ago that the press blew out of proportion (as they do with everything). This observation said something along the lines of "every 18 months, density of computer components doubles". For the past 30 years, this has been roughly true with hard disks, RAM, processors, and most other components.
Yet, over the past decade, one component has been doubling in density about every four months! This technology is flash memory (in NAND or another flavor). A year ago, we bought a 1GB SD card on sale at radio shack for $85US. Now they are practically giving them away. In 2000 we bought an 8MB MemoryStick for about $50US. Two years later we got a 256MB one cheaper.
