StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Its funny how one small little thing can make all the difference in the world. A small feature in a game, or a single piece of hardware.

I recently bought a new HD for my laptop. I upgraded from a 120 gig 5400 RPM drive to 320 gig 7200 RPM. The difference is incredible. Write and transfer speeds are markedly improved. And the size, on my it is nice. I went from having to pick and choose what to install to installing, well, everything. I've just peaked out at less then 100 gigs on the HD for the moment. 90% of the games my laptop can run are installed. All I got left is my movie collection. And if that wasn't enough, I have a 500 gig portable HD on order from Newegg for my full length movies to reside on.

So yeah, my laptop just became a wonderful portable entertainment device. More then it has been in a long time. I just need to spend time to find no-CD cracks so I don't have to carry those bad boys with me all the time. I just wish laptops were easier to upgrade. I desperately want to upgrade the CPU on this thing, but its never going to happen. Best I can hope for is to find an improved mobo for the same design.

I have a question for you because I was thinking about getting a laptop -
about how much less battery life do you have with the new HDD?
Also - it is, after all, an 1800 RPM increase. That's nothing to scoff at.

Good question. No idea. I don't use it like that very often. The laptop does have power controls and it will alter the level of power to systems when running on battery. Hmm, HD isn't one of those. So this will most likely have a negative affect on battery life. Considering I also have a 17" widescreen monitor, yeah, my battery doesn't last that long. Two hours if I am lucky.

Heh, a similar thing happened to me when I changed laptops this winter. Went from a 100GB HD one to a dual 320GB HDs one (640GB total). Where on the 100GB one I had to watch my disk consumption carefully, even killing shadow copies and similar technologies to regain a bit of space, on the new one I simply don't care. Something is 15GB you say? Eh, who cares, download. What you say about games is true as well. Back on the old one, I really had to ration, and have maybe two or three installed at the same time. On the new laptop, I currently have 22 games installed - there's pretty much a game to scratch every itch there.

Of course, the battery life sucks, but I'm almost always using my laptop in a room with a power plug so no big deal, and, paradoxically, it was on sale for less then then the same model configured with a single drive (Toshiba A300D) . I'll probably get one of the long running netbooks at some point for the mobility.