Vendors are so convinced of the benefits of this new technology that they formed the to promote this new technology. The HSA chose the stage at the in Las Vegas, a show within the CES 2007 show, to announce its presence to the world.

Did I say new technology? Well, it's sort of new: My earliest recollection of hybrid drives goes back two years to Samsung's (also a member of the Hybrid Alliance) on hybrid drives.

Regardless, HSA spokespersons say hybrid drives will be hardware-compatible with laptops but will require dedicated drivers that come standard with Vista. The Alliance is not talking about price ("that will be up to each vendor"), but I was assured that hybrid drives won't cost a fortune, so the expensive SanDisk SSD is not really a competitive concern at the moment.

A more formidable contender for hybrid drives is Intel's , a technology that speeds things up by using flash memory located on the motherboard instead of on the hard drive.

Robson caches and hybrid drives should produce comparable performance gain, according to the HSA, but an independent assessment of these two competing technologies and their cost won't be possible before Q2, when Intel is expected to make the Robson cache available.