Getting a 640m! HDD question though.

I've finally decided to buy a 640m (the £689 one here but with the TruLife screen and 9-cell battery.

The default hard drive is 5400RPM, and my question to you is: is it worth spending £70 ($130ish) more to get a 7200RPM hard drive of the same size? I'll be using this notebook for some light Photoshopping, internet browsing, movie and music watching / listening, IM applications and Office applications.

Thanks so much in advance!

 

IMO, that depends on what your configuration is. The HDD is very easy to upgrade, so if you want to get a higher CPU or something else that is more difficult, I would use the money on it.

You can always buy a 7200rpm HDD online, and normally it is cheaper.

The 7200 is faster andd would be good to have, but I'm not sure if it is worth 130.

 

One reason that most Notebook harddisk are still running 5400rpm is that because the 7200 runs very hot, and its not particular suitable.

 

5400 are better suited to portable devices imho. They are cooler and do not suck up as much battery life as a 7200. If the unit it mostly being used on a desk at home, a 7200 would be great

 

7200 rpm drives do not run that hot and perfectly suitable for a notebook.

i have 1+ year old i6000 with a 7200 rpm drive and ive never even felt the keyboard, palmrest or anything else even get the slightest bit warm.

i have the 9 and 6 cel batteries as well; i get 6 hrs on the 9 cel and 4 hrs on the 6 cel.

those seem like pretty good numbers to me

 

With what you plan to do with your notebook, it doesn't sound like you'll need a 7200 RPM HDD. Unless you plan on working with a lot of large files or large amounts of data, it is probably not worth the extra $130. For less than $130, you could even upgrade to a larger HDD.

I had a 7200 RPM HDD on my M140/630M & currently have a 5400 RPM HDD on my E1405/640M & personally don't notice much of a difference, for the tasks I do.

 

I'd do a hard drive upgrade later and as SG suggests either save the money or get a faster CPU [or graphics card if your intended use points that direction, but from what you described, I'd say probably not for that as well].

Same would apply for thoughts as to a memory upgrade.... hold off and do later on your own.

You're rather 'generic' use [like mine] doesn't justify much more that the basics.

Maybe you should be thinking about applying some of your 'funds' to some needed software/hardware for the not-so-fun aspects of system/file backup and restore.

fwiw...


Mark