[CoLoCo] Laptops and 7200 RPM HDDs

[Nelson E. Ingersoll]

Dave,

   I have a 3 year old Dell D600 from work, alas running Win XP/Pro.
Work!  What can I say.   Initially it had 512MB of RAM and a 30-40GB
5400RPM drive.  We upgraded it to 2GB of RAM and a 7200RPM 80GB drive.
While still no screamer, getting the 7200RPM drive did indeed increase
performance quite a bit.  Plus getting the 2GB of ram all but removed the
need for SWAP which also affected performance.

   The drive does gen more heat.  If your work requires a lot of disk
activity, that will be a drain on the battery and will heat up quite a
bit.  However, if you are just a little aggressive with power management,
for example, power down the disk after 5 minutes of idle, I think you'll
find it is tolerable.

   Just my 2 centavos.

- Nelson

David Overcash wrote:
> Hey guys,
> So I'm at the point to where I have to purchase a new laptop again and
> I've been doing my regular homework.  I've found some really nice deals
> but the point I'm stuck on is concerning whether or not it's worth
> getting a 7200 RPM hard drive or to just stick with the 5400 RPM. 
> Considering that I'm going to be a mostly mobile user but I still demand
> fairly good machine performance (thus the nvidia graphics instead of
> intel and 2 GB of RAM) I'm not sure if I should sacrifice my battery
> power for a bit faster hard drive access.
> 
> Have any of you used a laptop with a 7200 RPM HDD and noticed a
> substantial performance boost that truly warranted the drop in battery
> life?  Was it while you were gaming or doing simply "work" related stuff
> such as word processing, internet communications, and file browsing?
> 
> Thanks guys!
> -David
>