I have two (2) of the Seagate XT 500GB Hybrid HD's that came OEM in my Asus G73SW-3DE 3D-capable notebook, along with 12GB RAM (8GB std.), BluRay Rewriter/DVD Rewriter, Core i7 2630QM, "N"-capable WiFi card (Atheros 9285), and the best part of all a 120Hz LED LCD Display 17.3" in size by LG no less, in short an amazing package of items in a notebook.

Now the 1st thing I did was gut the notebook of one of the 500GB XT HD's and install a Vertex 3 120GB SSD for the OS, and any mission critical programs. I did a clean install so no more bloatware/adware/crapolaware either. Now that smart move got me 500MB/sec+ writes and reads (SATA 6 in the house), and I used the xtra storage for all my games and media (iTunes) for use away from home, as at home I use my shared network Media Server with a 4TB AppleTV Library inside.

That was an instant Hit Out of the Park, as I found the XT Hybrid HD a drag for program starting, OS launching, caching frequently used files and programs in the 4GB of DRAM onboard, because I was used to an SSD before in my previous notebook and I couldn't be stopped from installing one in the new ride. Now I've got stunning performance all around, boots in about 22 seconds, restarts in about 17-20 seconds, program launches are instantaneous, seeks and reads/writes are rocket-like, there's no waiting for anything.

With the price of SSD's coming down, down, down lately it wasn't a bitter pill to swallow either ($170 after rebate at Newegg.com), so I lost some storage on the OS HD, but then again I gained 250% in speed of the OS HD (SSD), so it's more than favorable for the SSD in the house rather than 2 x Momentous XT Hybrid 500GB HD's. I've still got plenty of room in the storage HD and the SSD can read *that volume* almost as quickly as it does its own volume for game launches and a couple movies that I have stored there also (c. 25GB worth of movies that I specially made for the smaller medium with Handbrake and AnyDVD).

There's just no excuse not to have a nice, fast, uber-launching SSD these days with the minimalist prices compared to last year even, you simply win all around, especially if you have a 2nd HD in the notebook for storage of all things large, media, movies, games, whatever.

As for these Hybrid HD's, they won't last too long in the marketplace, as Seagate has been known to dump something quickly if it doesn't sell out to the ground floor, and these HD's are underwhelming when used...they only have the illusion of being fast, to be danged the product reviews that tout them mostly for kickbacks from Seagate most likely. I see an SSD in anyone's future with a fast notebook interface (SATA 6) to install the SSD onto, it just makes sense vs the Hybrid HD's from Seagate.