Laptop Hardware Upgrade - need suggestions!
 

My Fujitsu P2120's Crusoe CPU is pretty sluggish to begin with, but the true bottleneck is the 4200rpm Toshiba MK4018GAP hard drive.

I want to upgrade to a 5400rpm drive, but also want to avoid overheating and a substantial reduction in battery life.

One drive I'm liking so far is the IBM/Hitachi Travelstar 40gb 40GNX, with 8mb cache. Reviews I've seen have shown it to be quite nice, beating out a drive with 16mb cache, in several tests.

Anyone have other suggestions, or misc. comments about this matter?

Check out the new Dell Inspirion 8600, they have the option for a 80gb 7200rpm drive. I don't know who makes the drive.

Naw, I don't want to replace my P.. its perfect for the kind of stuff I do. I only want to swap the HDD.

A 7200rpm drive is out of the question. The temperatures and battery drain are not worth it. Thanks though :D

it's made by ibm.

I would suggest atacom.com they have great laptop hard drive prices.

faster rpm doesnt always mean more energy wasted, especially if its an older drive you are replacing, you might want to check out the current draw and temperature ranges, its unlikley, but its possible you might be suprised!

i like the travelstars myself.

Maybe altering your OS's caching would help your speed or adding more RAM.

IBM sold off its HD line to Hitachi.

I bought this exact drive earlier this week for my Compaq M700. I've been really happy with it.

I replaced the stock Travelstar 6Gb. I can definitely see a BIG performance difference. The old drive was a real dog.

I haven't really had a chance to test the battery life since the change. I can tell that the machine runs a little hotter when there is a lot of drive activity. The drive on the M700 goes right into the front of the unit, so my hands rest right above it.

The drive is also dead quiet. I can't hear it at all unless I put my ear to the case, then all I hear is quiet clicking of the heads moving around.

Well, that settles it. Just placed my order for the 40GNX. Thanks for helping me justify my pre-made decision :D