Maxit Mag

Hitachi is planning to introduce new laptop hard drives into the market in 2007, all based on perpendicular recording and, most importantly, hybrid hard drive technology.

A "hybrid" drive is basically a hard drive with a little bit of flash memory built into it, so that most of the reading and writing can happen on the flash memory.  This way, the hard drive itself can stay off most of the time, which saves plenty of power and gives you an added boost in battery life.

Currently, the largest laptop drive Hitachi has is a 160GB, but they plan to release a 200GB, 7200RPM hybrid laptop hard drive within the first half of next year, followed by a 250GB, 5400RPM drive in the second half.  They also claim to be able to make a 750GB laptop drive by 2010, which is as large as desktop drives get right now.
Original article by TGDaily.