Dell has slammed an analyst's claim that a large number of disgruntled customers are returning the vendor's flash drive-based notebooks due to high failure rates.

Avian Securities managing partner Avi Cohen said in a report earlier this week that the rate of return on Dell notebooks using solid-state drives ranged from 20-30 per cent.

He claimed buyers couldn't justify the additional cash splurge on Dell's expensive Samsung SATA II Drive-based mobile PCs because they failed to live up to performance expectations.

The computer giant said today that Cohen's claims were "unfounded and wholly inaccurate, by orders of magnitude".

Dell insisted in a statement that: "Feedback from customers indicates they are pleased with the value they have realised from these benefits, especially the increased reliability."

In addition to being lighter than a hard drive, an SSD also consumes a fraction of power and transfers data to the host system more quickly. It's also much better able to survive sudden impacts.

However, critics have grumbled that flash drives, given their expensive price tag, fail to provide a better overall experience for the customer.

Cohen also found that the rate of return due to other technical problems with SSD notebooks was running at 10-20 per cent, much higher than the one per cent to two per cent reported for HDD-based mobile PCs. ®