[citation][nom]druids84[/nom]Well, of course, a future hybrid solution would be optimal, since dragging that external drive is a pain for all of us, but that's wishful thinking about the rosy future rather than an option right now and here. So either live with your slow HDD, overpay for huge SSD, or endure the agonizing pain of standing in line for check-in, baggage drop, security check, boarding, getting into your seat, and those never-ending additional 60seconds of attaching your dedicated "Movies/music&other junk" ext-HDD. Besides, watching raw Blu-Rays on an everyday laptop while on a plane is like listening to FLAC or raw PCM through a gramophone or your phone speaker. Come ohn! Encode in decent codec and it'll be less than 4-7GB, most laptop screens are well below FullHD res anyway, so what's the point?[/citation]
The 40 GB version of this device can be had for $100 (albeit a bit slower). How much does a decent external drive cost? 40-50 bucks at the minimum? I would rather have one of these and keep the 320GB HDD in the laptop. Then you get speed and capacity--for what a $50 premium? Hybrid solutions like this are imminent,not too far off in the rosy future. And .mkv playback sounds rather IMHO nice on a decent pair of headphones.
I have no desire to re-encode my entire blu ray collection (i ripped them in native format for optimal quality and to serve as a true backup) using a dual core Athlon II chip just so it will fit on a SSD.
I'm not trying to start a war here; mostly im agreeing with the point of the article, and that is a hybrid solution will be the next big step in mobile computing. The point I was trying to make is that needing more than 128 GB is not so "un-average" these days: I'm not a serious gamer, nor a professional graphics/video/content creator etc. But by the time you use up the space required by windows 7, your software suit, 7-8GB of music etc...etc...etc...its not as uncommon to use up 120GB of space.