Lenovo’s critically acclaimed ThinkPad X300 laptop does without a hard drive. Image: Lenovo

While munching on a reuben at Birk’s, a steakhouse in Silicon Valley, Seagate (STX) CEO Bill Watkins is explaining why he’s not too worried about a these trendy new laptops that have everything but a hard drive.

On the surface, this would seem to be a big problem. Seagate, after all, is the world’s largest hard drive maker with expected sales of more than $3 billion this quarter – so Watkins likes to see his wares go into more gadgets, not fewer. It’s easy to see why he tends not to favor devices like Lenovo’s sleek ThinkPad X300, which is winning raves for its light weight and silent operation, and its 64-gigabyte flash storage drive.

At next month’s Macworld show, will the trendsetter say goodbye to hard drives?

Apple’s MacBook Pro could get a storage upgrade soon. Image: Apple

What do you get when you cross an iPod with a Mac?

A super-slim laptop that uses chip-based flash memory in place of a spinning hard drive, of course. If the rumors are right, Apple (AAPL) will unveil one at the annual Macworld confab next month.

Before you begin salivating from gadget lust however, be forewarned. The rumors should be taken with a grain of salt (or a whole tub of it if you have one handy) — and not just because Apple prognosticators have predicted for years that an ultra-light dream machine is right around the corner.

Toshiba HD-A2. Image: Toshiba

The battle for the future of the high-definition DVD has taken an intriguing turn: For the first time, mega-retailer Wal-Mart (WMT) has begun selling a player for less than $200.

In various online forums, enthusiasts have reported seeing the Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player available in stores for $198, significantly less than its common price of $230-$280.

Mobile phone services that offer directions and other location-based services will be huge in 2008, says Mark Collins, vice president of consumer data services for AT&T (T).

Market research firm iSuppli says the subprime mortgage mess and financial market turmoil could make consumers hesitant to open their wallets and buy pricey TVs this holiday season.

Palm (PALM) reported disappointing quarterly results on Monday, and it came as no surprise – the smartphone maker is getting squeezed every which way.

On the low end, smartphones from Samsung and Motorola (MOT) are nibbling away market share. On the high end, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone has popular buzz and Research in Motion (RIMM) is winning over mobile workers. ABI Research says RIM captured 44 percent of the North American smartphone market this spring, up from 33 percent a year ago. The gains came at the expense of Palm, which slid from 33 percent to 24 percent.

Even if you’re not a heavy user of its Photoshop software, or even an investor in its stock, it might be a good idea to watch this afternoon’s earnings announcement from Adobe Systems (ADBE).

That’s because Adobe, the Silicon Valley-based software maker that also sells Flash, Photoshop, Acrobat, and other popular programs, will give investors the earliest possible peek at how healthy the technology industry was this summer. The next-earliest major tech company to report earnings is Oracle (ORCL), which releases its results on Thursday – but aside from that, no big players will weigh in until Intel (INTC) and Yahoo (YHOO) share their numbers on October 16.

Silicon Valley is still the headquarters location of choice for chip makers, research firm iSuppli says. In fact, the firm estimates that a quarter of all global chip companies have headquarters in the area south of San Francisco.

Last year 56 Silicon Valley semiconductor suppliers raked in $68.2 billion in sales. That’s still far ahead of the second-place locale, Taiwan’s Hsinchu City, which managed $50.2 billion.

Dell (DELL) has begun shipping consumer laptops that use Samsung flash memory rather than a just hard drive to store data, the two companies said today.

The 2.5-inch SATA, 32- and 64-gigabyte solid state drives are shipping in Dell subsidiary Alienware’s Area-51 m9750 gaming laptop and in Dell’s XPS M1330 ultra-portable. Later this year, the company expects to make flash drives available on more XPS systems, Latitude business laptops and Precision mobile workstations.