[Woodman]

It is just a baseline for the masses. Thing is, it’s a laptop and I had to make price/performance compromises. I didn’t upgrade the graphics because it’s not important to me, and the drive is fast enough.

I have a Windows Experience Index of 3.4 on the laptop because of the Graphics. It would most likely have gone to a 4.2 with a card upgrade that would have cost another $100+ dollars. The H/D is fast enough and sometimes the transfer rate and the buffer make a bigger difference than the spin rate.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

sometimes the transfer rate and the buffer make a bigger difference than the spin rate

Agreed.

SATA is fast. Very, very fast.

But, you know, ATA133, with 16MB cache, ain't exactly slow itself.