Laptop Vista Premium certification will require hybrid HDDs
Far from being a niche technology that just happens to fully thrive in Windows Vista, it turns out that those hybrid hard drives we've been following for some time will actually be required equipment for laptops wishing to sport the Vista Premium logo. TG Daily caught up with Microsoft's Windows Client Performance program manager Matt Ayres at TechEd 2006 to pin him down about recent updates to the Windows Logo Device Program Requirements, and sure enough, Ayres confirmed that the new wording does indeed mean that hybrid drives will be part-and-parcel of Premium-labeled mobile systems released after June 1, 2007. As you may or may not recall, these so-called ReadyDrive HDDs manufactured by Samsung, Seagate, and unnamed others offer up to 256MB of on-board flash memory for faster boot times and better battery life thanks to buffering that reduces the amount of necessary drive spinning.
[Thanks, Mack S.]
