These drives are meant for the newer 1U/2U servers that accept the 2.5" drives. At 12.5mm they are still thinner than the "normal" 15mm SAS (serial attached scsi) 2.5" drives that come with these servers.

Servers are migrating to the 2.5" form factor as they actually provide a higher storage density (capacity per unit volume) and lower power than their 3.5" counterparts.

I still have my original PC/XT with its astonishing, high-capacity 10MB 5.25" full-height hard drive and 360K 5.25" floppy drive (also full-height). What's more, it still works! So does my amber Princeton Graphics monochrome monitor (although the screen is a bit burned in these days). It's got an AST 6-Pack Plus board in it with 640KB RAM, 2 RS-232 serial ports (25-pin), a 25-pin Centronics parallel port and a 9-pin game port, too.

I do admit, however, that it's a bit slow by today's standards.

Fujitsu has not announced a "500GB notebook hard drive." They've announced a 500GB 2.5" drive. There's a difference.

Their PR says The new series responds to the growing need for hard drives in the 2.5" form factor that can handle high-volume storage for such products as digital video recorders and external hard drives. The words "notebook" or "laptop" aren't used at all -- heck, they don't even say "mobile." So while it's automatic for many of us to see "2.5" and think "notebook" that's not the market they're targeting with this. And while confusion and disappointment will undoubtedly occur for some people who purchase it under the same misapprehension, I don't know that Fujitsu can be preemptively criticized if other people don't take care to read tech specs or do due diligence. I certainly hope Fujitsu's marketing materials make clear that it won't fit into many notebooks, but but I don't expect that in a press release (you don't see PR for server processors talking about how they aren't suitable for mobile applications either). And I suspect this is largely going to be an OEM item anyway.

I wonder if it'll fit in my PS3 :/

Are they Mac Compatible?
lawl

ostiguy is right. The original 2.5" spec had 3 heights. All are still valid, its just that the OEM's have standardised on the smallest for laptops.

This is just a dumb idea that will result in unncessary RMA's. People who know to buy a 2.5" hdd for their laptop will get misled by this drive's 2.5" description.

I mean, if I bought an ATX power supply and discovered that it didn't fit in most ATX cases, I'd have a good reason to be upset. How is a 2.5" hdd cage any different? It needs to labelled as something other than 2.5" because, official standard or not, 2.5" is now a format that's taken for granted and these 2.5" non-standard drives are going to rock the boat a bit.