Seagate stopping production of 7,200rpm laptop hard drives...

I am glad to see more and more folks going the way of SSDs. This will help bring down the cost quite rapidly as more and more adopt the SSD format.

As of now all my systems have a 256 SSD setup as the OS drive, and all (except my iMac 27" (new thin model) have at least one 512 SSD. MY win 7 server has three (sweet). No I am not as rich as Billy G., but as there is no one else I have to worry about I can afford some of the nice toys that are available out there. . .

Hi there
Things like SCSI and 10,000 RPM spinners come into High end range for HDD's and certainly wouldn't be used in laptops or most home computers.

Large spinners are still fine for holding backups / archives / data that rarely changes or data you don't need to access very fast.

SSD's are the way to go for OS'es and other data that needs very fast access times. I wouldn't recommend HYBRIDS -- here you get usually a slowish SSD and having two sets of technology incorporated into the device complicates the electronics, plus it needs more power, has possibility of mechanical failure and generates vibration and heat.

The price of 256 GB SSD's is now less than the 128 GB SSD's of even a year ago and the manufacture of these is a lot less polluting - for a start no motors so no IRON or Copper needed - extraction of both these materials is hugely polluting and requires at least in the case of Iron - huge amounts of Coal which isn't the best friend to the atmosphere. Don't forget also the bearings motors require as well - these might be STEEL - also a heavily polluting substance to manufacture.

Expect to see 500GB and 1TB SSD's at affordable prices in the not too distant future. Even now there are some 400 - 500 USD 500GB SSD's out there -- too expensive for me but you get the drift.

SSD's are just as reliable as spinners these days --and maybe more so.

Cheers
jimbo

Woot, just got my income tax refund, more than enough for two SDD's and one or two other toys. I'm going to get a 128 and a 256 gig for my laptop.

I replaced the HDDs in 3 of my laptops with SSDs and stuck the recovered HDD into a caddy attaching it via USB for images and big files. My laptops are more or less stationary, so that is no problem. For 'on the road', we take the tablet.

Laptops with 2 bays are, of course, the sweet spot. But I have only seen that on 17" models.

Yeah, I just bought an ASUS K75DE, 17.3 inch screen and two hard drive bays. The spinner that's in it will go into an external enclosure.