Really neat idea: a combined Hard Drive and Solid-State Drive (4GB).

http://www.dabs.com/...4948244#filters

Monitors the hard drive usage and stuffs the really frequently used stuff in SSD. For a frequent on-off cycler of a netbook this would obviously be the boot sectors, most of the operating system and the most often used apps - like the e-mail client.

Would be even neater if there was a utility to include/exclude files or sectors. Careful selection would also render the machine still bootable after a nasty drop. I'm assuming the SSD mirrors and not completely replaces the HD data.

Would order one instantly, except my two most frequently used netbooks use IDE drives, and aren't modern enough to have SATAs. One day soon'ish!

the price of ssd's should make your mind up for you unless you've just won the lotto!

If your data is more valuable than the hardware often there's no alternative. Particularly true of a pocket machine which is near certain to take a drop at some point in time. Also uses a lot less power, has no spool-up time, and is in most cases faster - particularly for reading.

This hybrid is not that much dearer than a regular hard drive, so it might just catch on in the mass market. We'll see if other HD manufacturers bring out similar.