Question about aftermarket parts

Hello, I've been thinking about geting a new laptop soon and have a couple of questions. I was looking at a laptop on line and under hard drive it says "Supports 2.5" 9.5mm IDE HDD with Ultra ATA-100 up to 120GB". So I figured I'd check New egg to see if the proces listed there for harddrives would be any cheaper. To my surprise, they are listed as ATA-6, ATA-7 and Serial ATA. So I'm a bit confused as to which hard drives I could get.

Also, a question about notebook batteries. I see most online congiguations let you pick a spare battery, but they tend to be pretty price. Understandable. So I was thinking of buying the 2nd battery later on. Only I was wondering if each laptop takes a specific battery and only that battery or if they are generic, like AA, AAA, or 9V batteries are for consumer electionics. Can you just walk in to a Best Buy and grab a 6cell laptop batter and plug it in to any old lap top?

The lap top I was looking at That inspired these questions was from Rawpowerpc. The MS-1036.

Sorry for such basic questions, But I've just begun my search for a laptop and know very little about them still. Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

ATA-100 is just refers to the interface transfer rate, which in this case is 100MB/second. ATA-6 refers to the maximum storage capacity of the hard drive. ATA-6 has a maximum capacity of 144PB(PetaBytes, or quadrillion bytes), which is probably going to be the standard for quite some time. As for notebook batteries, no you can't just go into a store and get a generic laptop battery. They are made for specific models and won't fit universally. Although often times, they are interchangeable within different models of the same manufacturer. So if HP has two different model laptops, if they both take 6-cell batteries, they may be interchangeable, but that's no guarantee, unless they state it.

Matt

 

Thanks for the information. I was affraid of that for the batteries.

One more question about the hard drives though. Are ATA-6 and ATA-7 interchangable? Or are they totally different?

Thanks again for any information.