Screen Rez Vs Hard Drive speed

Hi, i'm thinking about getting a new dell 1520 as my new laptop. I will be using it for schoolwork and gaming mostly. I wanted to know whether i should get a 7200 rpm hard drive over a 5400rpm one, or the 1440 screen rez. both upgrades cost 48 bucks so I don't know which to get. Any recommendations?

 

1440x900 definently.

I don't think you would need 7200 unless you do lots of video editing or whatever.

 

harddrives are upgradeable. Always keep that in mind.

 

The harddrive will only speed up your load times, but performance in anything but the most grueling tasks (reading and writing wise - video editing) will not be affected much. The screen res on the other hand will be a nice and noticeable improvement. You can always switch out the harddrive later on too.

 

i was in the same boat, ultimately i picked the 1440x900 screen res. I'm not so impatient that i had to go with the 7200 rpm HDD.

 

I'd go with the higher resolution screen.
The screen is not upgradeable without a huge amount of effort placed into it.

The hard drive can easily be upgraded if you feel unsatisfied with the current one. It's only a matter of unscrewing a few bolts, unmount, and mount in the new one, screw back the bolts and boot up.

Also, note that the difference between 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM is not a significant amount. In some cases, it can be negligible. It simply just boots, loads and transfers a bit faster.

So if you got a bit of patience, go with the 5400 RPM and get the nice higher resolution screen.

 

well u say you do gaming?
i would get both if i were you as the 7200rpm drive will increase loading times and the screen will improve the way you see and play the game

 

Noone mentioned this: 7200 will actually end up eating more battery life than a 5200. sooo.... think, faster load time with less battery or slower load times with more battery?

While the speed is negligible the battery is not. faster HDs will take off about 30 min of battery life if you keep it spinning. Thats why people are working on flash HDs so that they dont need constant spinning which ends up make HUGE increases in performance. (3 - 4 hours added)

 

a 7200rpm drive will not decrease battery by 30 mins! maybe 5-10 but not 30!

 

how is the performance with your processor is it much of a huge difference between the 2.0 ghz

 

agreed. maybe 5-10min TOPS.

screen now, HD later