[craig @ Apr 23rd 2007 9:58AM]

Flash may not be cheap but 256MB of flash is. Why would anyone pay extra for a downgrade to 80GB in order to get a lousy 256MB of flash?

[Maff @ Apr 23rd 2007 10:10AM]

faster boot times? lower power consumption?

[craig @ Apr 23rd 2007 10:16AM]

"faster boot times? lower power consumption?"

...which could be added conventionally rather than through a hybrid hard drive. Doing so would cost little and would allow you to choose a conventional hard drive without capacity limitations.

I say again, why would anyone pay extra for a hard drive *downgrade* in order to get a lousy 256MB of flash. Far more flash could be added cost effectively without changing the hard drive at all.

[Mackie Drew @ Apr 24th 2007 7:13PM]

Even though it is a small amount of flash, it is a step in the right direction. Although flash does write slower than a traditional hard disk it does write small packets of data faster. This will result in less power consumption, less noise, and better performance.

[craig @ Apr 24th 2007 8:56PM]

If there's not enough flash to make a single application faster then it's not "a step in the right direction". Teeny tiny baby steps aren't worth taking particularly when you have to make sacrifices in capacity to get them. We don't bother making performance improvements a fraction of a percent at a time.