M1530 Pricing and HDDs

I am looking at buying an XPS M1530. Now I know that the system is available with a 160Gb 7200rpm HDD, but this is not available as an option on any of the "pre-built" models - to get it you have to start from scratch and these "start from scratch" models don't seem to attract any of the discounts (£50 off, free shipping). In other words I end up paying a fair bit more for a model with a 160Gb 7200rpm HDD than I would for an equivalent model with a 320Gb 5400rpm HDD.

Bizzarely, because the EPP pages don't even include pre-built models I pay even more through the EPP program!!

Questions:

1) Would I be able to squeeze a better deal out of Dell over the phone?

2) If not, would you pay more for a hard disk that is half the size, but a 7200rpm model rather than 5400rpm? Or is the difference not that significant?

 

The pricing must still be off there, because it used to be similar here. It once costed more to buy a 200gb 7200rpm hard drive then the 320gb 5400rpm, now the 200gb 7200rpm one is $60 less. i bought the 7200rpm and got a 15% happy hour discount over the phone even tho the happy hour ended 3 hours before i ordered it lol! Hard drive speed is often the bottleneck of modern computer systems so i would go for the higher speed drive, but i would definitely call them and ask about that.

Michael

 

They just increased the price of the 200GB 7200rpm HDD by $100. I went to build my computer to buy and it was a $100 difference from last night at 11 PM (EST). This is ridiculous.

 

OK, so I spoke to Dell and they agreed to give me £50 off the built from scratch model. So its now £20 more for a 160Gb 7200rpm model than for a 250Gb 6400rpm model (the 320Gb HDD has mysteriously been dropped from the spec).

However, I get 5% discount through Quidco which I wouldn't get on the custom built model (as I would have to order over the phone) so the price differential is more like £65. Aaaargh!

 

There's no way I'm spending that much more for the 200GB 7200 RPM model from one day ago.