concerns for bigger hard drive in studio 14z

hi guys, after reading many good things about the studio 14z, i have decided that it will be my new "portable" laptop. I want to upgrade the hard drive of this to 500gb @ 5400rpm (from 320gb @ 5400rpm), but i have some concerns:

1. weight - how much weight will be added to the laptop if I go from 320gb to 500gb? I want my laptop to be as light as possible.

2. battery - will the battery drain faster under a bigger hard drive? I recall having read somewhere that the only hard drive factor that affects battery life is the rpm. Is that right?

 

1 depends on the specific hard disk you recieve and the one that you switch to. Considering that dell may pick one of any number of different drives to supply you with, you would likely have to wait until you recieve it and then check out the model number on the system device page and then compare that with what you are putting in. You should also be aware, though, that dell offers a 500 GB 5400 RPM drive, in case that interests you at all, and it would save you the difficulty of swapping the drives out.

Not too sure about #2, but what you are saying does sound correct.

 

1. Do what Karan said.
2. Size has no effect on battery life, only rpm.

 

thx for the replies guys.

i don't want to create a new thread for this, so i'll just ask here. after more reading on the 14z owner's lounge, there appears to be many problems with the studio 14z and windows 7 (lower battery, screen flickering, etc) Do you guys reckon Dell will address them in the near future through updates or something? I will switch to windows 7 asap and I dont want to lose 1hr battery life doing so.

 

I didn't have the screen flickering and I switched up. I haven't had a chance to really test out battery life (I've also undervolted) but as far as I can tell it hasn't been too bad - I think it has to do with drivers which just have not been optimized for the new OS.

 

Sorry I'm new to this, but based on your past experiences with Dell, do you think they will be quick to release driver updates once windows 7 officially comes out to address the battery problem? The relatively long battery is the main reason I am buying the studio 14z.

 

The drivers should be out fairly soon - they've already begun rolling them out for other models such as the inspiron 1545, but as I mentioned before, I'm not 100% certain that the drivers are the issue with the battery life. I should note though - I'm getting at least 4.5 - 5 hours life with my laptop now, with win7.

 

Another thing I want to mention is that nobody reported flickering on 900p screen, only the 720p screen owners (and only on the low brightness settings. With other brightness values there's no flicker). I think it has to do with the different manufacturers of those screens.

I am 100% confident that Dell will release newer drivers in the future (as they always do), but there's no guarantee that it will somehow add to battery life.

 

Do you have any flickering with your screen? What screen do you have?