Will I noticed big improvement in 7K60 over 40GB 5400 for NON-INTENSIVE user

[HuckleberrySeed]

My T43 will be arriving any time today (though I can't play with it until after my finals friday). Unfortunately, it will have a 40GB 5400rpm IBM hard drive.

My uses consist of Office Apps, Mathematica, Web browsing, winamp, AIM, maybe another math/business program, but NO gaming. I know that the 7K60 is king in terms of speed, as all benchmarks show. For me, however, is it worth the $150 for the 7K60 given my tasks? If I will notice a difference, then I have no problem, however if it's a matter of adobe reader loading in 2 seconds versus 2.5, than I'm not sure....

As a side note, for $150 shipped brand new, I could probably use it for a week or so, alternating between the drives, and then determine myself. I guess the 40GB 5400 could be used as an external HDD?

 

[Jassi]

I wouldn't waste money on it. If you need more space, get a good 80gig 5400rpm drive and you probably will not notice the difference between the 7k60 and the 5400.

 

[fbrdphreak]

You could definitely use the 40GB 5400RPM for an external drive, it would be very small too!

In terms of performance, you will see a difference. Boot time, application load time, etc etc will all be improved. Would I say it alone is worth $150 for a non-intensive user? No. Now if you want more storage and performance, wait until Seagate's 80-100GB 7200RPM drives are released and drop one of those in. The added storage+performance is a better combination for the money IMO.

Otherwise, I would just stick with the 40GB 5400RPM. My T42 has the same drive and I am an intensive user, no complaints here!

 

[Tseng]

When I ordered my Dell D505, I only asked for a 30G 4200rpm HD. The minute I got the laptop, I pull it out and put in the 7K60. Sell the 30G on auction site.

Even you are not a game player, you will still be benefit from the speed.

 

[Mike01]

Let's not forget battery consumption.

A 7200rpm drive eats a lot more juice than a 5400rpm drive, which in turn eats more juice than a 4200rpm drive.

Performance difference is NOT that noticeable.

I have a 100GB 4200 rpm drive in my laptop, and a 160GB 7200 rpm drive (Seagate Barracuda) in my desktop. The desktop is a 3.2GHz P4, the laptop is a 2.4GHz A64, both have a gig of ram. The desktop sometimes loads things a hair faster than the laptop, but it's something you have to be sitting next to both of them with a stopwatch to notice...a few seconds here, a few seconds there, etc.

HD size, however, is noticeable. I have 20GB left of my 100GB drive (because of video editing). This is all temporary...files go away after I'm done with a project, but if I had a 40, 60 or even 80GB HD, I wouldn't be able to use it the way I do.

 

[ActuaryTm]

Originally posted by: Mike01
Performance difference is NOT that noticeable.

Would qualify the above remark with "dependent upon the application". Quite a few applications would show noticable improvement, of course.

For the applications listed in the original post however, likely little to no difference would be noticed.

 

[Mike01]

I suppose that would be a wise qualification, but I really notice no difference in anything (I'd like to think I do a wide variety of things with my PCs).

That's not to say benchmarks won't show a big difference, but what benchmarks show and what you notice are two entirely different things.

What kind of applications show a big noticeable difference in performance?

 

[railer]

No, although the 7k60 is also denser than the 5.4k40, which would add to its speed advantage. Just get a 5.4k 80 or 100 and then you'll have both speed and size. 😀