Without the exact drive model there is no way to find out the exact wattage each drive uses. (I wish iFixit printed drive specs like OWC does.) I tried to find the specs sheets for each, and it looks like the Hybrid use a bit more power — between half a watt and a watt depending on activity (active 2.5W vs 1.5–2W) and about half a watt more while idle (.9W vs. .55W). It could be ~5% less battery life with the Hybrid. So, over 5Hours that would be about 15m less operating time. (This is assuming I found the right specs sheets.)
If this is the seagate hybrid you are considering. it uses more power all around:
http://origin-www.seagate.com/files/www-...
Toshiba MQ01ABD Specs
http://storage.toshiba.com/storagesoluti...
FYI: I had this model MBP and upped the RAM to 16GB, and the performance difference was significant. I recommend everyone running 10.7 & up to upgrade to 16GB if they can. I use my race horse in a box analogy: the box is how far the horse can extend its legs in one stride: with 8GB it cannot extend its legs fully. With 4GB it is like 30% of it full stride, while 8GB is about 60% of its full stride, and 16GB would be larger than its full stride. Real world this does not translate to a 40% increase (thanks to overhead and how the programs are written) — more like 25%–30%. However, the less the CPU has to hit the VRAM (HD), the faster the machine responds. If you run a lot of apps concurrently, then more RAM allows more of them to stay resident in memory at one time and switching between them is more fluid and avoids a trip to the HD which also saves a bit of time and power.
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Fantastic feedback, everyone. My budget is limited--and I'm holding onto my MBP for as long as I can, as it does everything I need it to—so I'll likely upgrade to hybrid hard drive now, and later upgrade the RAM to the max (8 GB).
Thanks, everyone, for your input. Much appreciated!
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