Dell's XPS M1730 first laptop with 7,200RPM 320GB disk

While Fujitsu and Hitachi may have announced first, Seagate is first to commercialize its new 7,200RPM, 320GB SATA disk with 16MB cache. The Momentus 7200.3 with G-Force free-fall protection is now available as an option on Dell's "XPS laptops" -- at the moment, it appears limited to the XPS M1730 for a $46 premium over the 320GB 5,400RPM spinner. Alienware laptop rigs should see the new HDD option soon enough.

[David @ May 19th 2008 8:31AM]

$46 is pretty reasonable for dell with such a sweet upgrade

[Goofy Footr @ May 19th 2008 8:50AM]

Agreed.

With as much as your probably already spending, $46 is chump change.

[Pochi @ May 19th 2008 9:25AM]

It might be cheap, but for an upgrade that seems like it'll give you a *SLIGHT* speed boost at the cost of major battery life... eeehhh...

Then again, I don't know if many people buy high end XPS laptops for battery life.

[Jose Hebron @ May 19th 2008 9:14AM]

Little concerned that access times are not listed on Seagate's web-site.

[Jimmy Jones @ May 19th 2008 9:26AM]

how green is this thingy with a 7200 rpm hdd? I thought Dell was somewhat greenish? or they changed course of direction?

[packetsniffer @ May 19th 2008 10:08AM]

Oh, yeah, they're going to just stop selling all high performance components in order to force you save the environment with your monstrous 17" laptop. Sounds like a logical business plan.

If anyone is actually concerned about their laptop being "green", the hard drive is among the least of your worries; you should be asking why the screen is 17", why that 17" screen isn't LED backlit, why the CPU isn't a ULV 1.06Ghz, or why it doesn't run on water. As for the hard drive, the 7200RPM drives are marginally more power hungry than 5400RPMs at worst -- in fact, many of them are equally efficient.

But while we're at it, why stop at 5400RPM, anyway? Why not go down to 4200? 13.3"? Lose the discrete GPU?

[Ayle @ May 19th 2008 2:59PM]

@packetsniffer
I see what you did here... That was low-blow. MAgistrally executed but low-blow nonetheless...

[packetsniffer @ May 19th 2008 5:28PM]

@Ayle
Wha...?

[Kurian @ May 19th 2008 9:35AM]

I don't give a fuck even if I have to plug it in to run it. It better run all my games with 4xAA 16xAF @ native resolution or I'm not buying it.

[Pete Steege @ May 19th 2008 10:59AM]

The zero-G sensor senses freefall and braces the drive for impact before the computer hits the floor.

Seagate's slow-motion video of the zero-G sensor locking down the drive as it drops: http://storageeffect.com/2007/11/29/drop-safe-notebooks/

[Podaman @ May 19th 2008 11:58AM]

It's more like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MZmmv6h5oo

[Phoenix @ May 19th 2008 10:02AM]

GAH!

Just give us Brits the option to give this laptops the specs that are advertised on the damn site already!

FUCKING FALSE ADVERTISING!

[Casper42 @ May 19th 2008 1:49PM]

So with the 17" XPS you can have 2 drives right?

Do they offer RAID as well? 640GB RAID0 using 2 of these little monsters would be awesome.
In fact since its an Intel chipset, if it supports Matrix RAID you could create a 300GB RAID0 for OS and Games and then use the left over 150GB on each disk for a 150GB RAID1 Storage area for your important docs and digital camera pics and such.

[Bull @ May 20th 2008 4:19AM]

I want this in my XPS M1530.