Will the slow HD be a problem?

No major issue. Portables have slower drives for lower heat emission.

Faster hard drives DO help with performance, a lot in fact. And they shouldn't take much more battery power than is already being used by a 4200 RPM drive. Definitely go for a 5400 RPM or even a 7200 RPM (has to be user-installed because Apple doesn't offer it) if you have the money.

It depends on what you're doing. For surfing the web, checking email and word processing it won't make a bit of difference. If you're opening, editing and saving monstrous Photoshop or video files frequently, you'll want a faster drive.

7200 RPM for a laptop? Do they have those now?

Yep. And take it from me, I was running a 20gb 5400rpm HD on my Cube for the longest time. I got an 80gb 7200rpm drive a few months ago, the speed difference is amazing. Go for the fastest drive you will need, most likely a 5400 will be fine, but if you have the money and are willing to deal with the extra fan nose that will happen as a result of increased heat in your machine, go for a 7200!

You might not need it of course, but even for things like internet browsing, iTunes, Mail, etc, a faster hard drive is certainly nice. Apps open faster, files save faster, menus will pop up faster. Whether or not the difference is worth the bucks to do the upgrade is up to you of course, but you would notice it.

Even for just browsing, the browser caches a lot of stuff on the drive. A faster drive helps a lot. And if you don't have enough RAM, it'll help even more.

I wouldn't. I didn't. If you really think you might benefit from a faster drive, I'd set that $125 aside. Wait until you've used the PowerBook for awhile and if you think disk access seems slow, buy a faster drive, install it yourself and put the spare in an external Firewire enclosure. This assumes you're comfortable with installing a drive yourself. (I haven't done it with an Al PowerBook but it was easy in a Titanium.) This plan would cost a little more but would be, in my opinion, a better use of your money than paying Apple for the faster drive.

>menus will pop up faster.

No.

>I have 512mb of RAM.

That isn't terribly much, yet for web browsing, it should suffice.

Do want you want. Portables have slower drives for a purpose.

Yes. I can confirm it, when moving from a laptop to a desktop, that many things were faster. Application switches went from one or two seconds for a switch to nearly instant. Menus DID pop up faster. With the laptop, it seemed like there was always a little delay or latency added into everything I did.


512 MB of RAM is what I'd consider the optimal amount for OS X for anything short of professional-type work. I have had 640 MB in all the OS X Macs I've used, and it hasn't been a problem. Looking at MenuMeters now, I have 287 MB free and I'm using 353 MB. I rarely see it go below 200 MB free, so 512 MB should be fine for just about anyone (although having a GB is kinda cool).

Also, the main reason laptops have slow drives is until now, fast drives have been too difficult, expensive, power hungry, and they generate too much heat to be practical. A year ago I think you could get a 40 GB 5400 RPM laptop drive, and that was the best one. Now you can get an 80 GB 5400 RPM one, or a 60 GB 7200 RPM one. They work in laptops now because of the improved technology that allows them to not require much more power or generate much more heat than 4200 RPM drives.

I normally don't like to accuse people of trolling because it seems rude and I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt. But judging by the posts you've made it seems like you might need to just lighten up a bit. No need to get angry at people over the internet, it's not like it'll do anything other than raise your blood pressure anyway.

If you are going to do any serious recording, then get the fastest drive you can. The same is true if you are doing video work. For most other tasks it will not make a huge difference.

Basically, I agree that a fast hard drive will make a big improvement in overall speed.

The details are more complicated. The throughput of a HD depends on several factors one of which is the rotational speed of the platter. The density of the data on the platter, the settling time of the R/W head, the speed of the electronics, the quality of the firmware all have a role to play when considering the speed of a drive.

In general, a faster rotational speed is associated with faster throughput.

However, even at the same RPM a denser disk is also faster. An 80GB 5400RPM drive is probably faster than a 20GB 5400RPM drive. Not only is the data denser (denser data takes less time to pass beneath the R/W head) but the larger drive is probably a lot newer so the electronics, firmware and other items are probably faster as well.

To top it off, drives with the same platter speed from different manufacturers perform differently.

To really decide which drive to use consult one of the several sites which measure drive performance.

Testimonial != confirmation

Of course, you could use a 7200 rpm firewire HD for those times that you really need the speed, like when recording, playing/editing high bitrate video, even playing graphics intensive gaming. Plus you can backup a little, and so on. But you're bound to your desk, mostly. Is there a bus powered 7200 rpm firewire HD around?

True. There were many other improvements that could have accounted for the difference as well.

I can't remember now where I saw it, but some site did a speed/data comparison between the 4200 RPM PowerBook drive and the 5400 RPM optional PowerBook drive.

There was virtually no difference execept the 4200 RPM drive ran MUCH cooler.

Now if only I could find the article...

I only have 384 MB of ram on my Cube and she runs like a dream. I do a lot of photoshop, illustrator, and FCP work. I'm planning on upgrading someday, but not until I see a significant slowdown, or the system requirements for RAM spike.