Is Momentus XT the perfect Netbook upgrade?

I had a recent exchange via Twitter with a Momentus XT customer @erickMoore regarding an InfoWeek article titled “Future Of HDD Market Lies In Hybrid Drives“. It’s a good read, check it out.

Anyway, Erick’s comments to me via Twitter made me think a bit more about hard drive upgrades for Netbooks (assuming only those netbooks that ship with hard drives). In this case, Erick has a an HP Mini 210 that typically ships with a 5400RPM hard drive. You have several options to choose from on HP’s website, but one of those options is not a Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive. He apparently upgraded his wife’s netbook with a Momentus XT, and in his words “Amazing how much faster it is with that drive. It went from basically unusable to being quite peppy!”

I have no idea how many of these HP Mini 210’s are out there, nor do I know how many netbooks are in the field equipped to take hard drives, but I have to assume it’s in the millions. With the introduction of the Apple iPad, among other tablets, it seems the netbook craze has slowed. Many experts saying that tablets are taking a significant bite out of the netbook market. I wonder how many people have some buyer’s remorse for investing in a netbook a year or two ago.

Is Momentus XT a simple upgrade that could breath some life into that investment? Well, if increased speed was a major source of frustration, it very well could be, considering how much people praise the performance of flash based tablets. At least with solid state hybrid, you keep your capacity and get SSD like performance for a pretty good cost per gigabyte as Erick’s tweet suggests.

All I know is that I am rethinking this whole netbook thing for my wife and kids. Perhaps investing in a sub-$300 netbook and add a solid state hybrid drive is the route I will go.

Have you upgraded your netbook?