My 80GB Hitachi drives are much thinner than my older IBM/Hitachi 60GB drives. Actually, I'm surprised that it has taken them this long to come out with 80gb drives. Seems like they could have added one platter to the 80GB models to be as thick as the older 60gb drives and had them out long ago. I guess two possibilities are a) the market no longer allows for taller 2.5" drives since notebooks are getting smaller and smaller or b) they've been sitting on 100gb drives for some time now and have simply been waiting for the demand to materialize.