My only comment about Newegg "reviews" is that they are usually written very
soon after purchase. So they are merely a reaction to first use, and say
nothing useful about reliability.
I know my opinions or biases are well known, but we have 18 years repairing
portable computers, and 15 years repairing Thinkpads... where we have seen
large numbers of Thinkpads and other laptops used by insurance companies and
sales teams.. Something happened to the engineering technology of laptop
drives when they became larger than 15 GB, and Hitachi has been a high
failure item since they purchased the IBM Deathstar manufacturing, and moved
from 4200 rpm 20 GB drives. I rate them only better than Fujitsu and
Tri-Gem... but lower in quality and reliability than than Seagate, Toshiba,
Western Digital, and Samsung. I like the fact that Seagate posts their
date on the drive so you know how long the drive is warranteed... and that
Samsung reportedly now has a five year warranty out. There is a lot of new
technology for mobile drives, but of course Lenovo will be the last to use
them.
Still, I have no recent experience with Hitachi failures in the past year,
so maybe they have corrected their laptop problems. I know Dell and HP are
still having trouble with their Hitach desktop drives.
Good luck to you. Please keep us posted.
On Nov 11, 2007 9:09 AM, Scott Matthews <scott@turnstyle.com> wrote:
> From what I could tell, the 7K200's are well-liked. But there are really
> two
> different questions here:
>
> 1) whether to take a Lenovo factory upgrade, or to purchase a separate
> drive.
>
> 2) if getting a factory upgrade and/or a separate drive, then which.
>
> To me, it was clearly better to get a separate drive -- Lenovo charges a
> big
> premium, and it could prove helpful to wind up with a backup drive (it
> seems
> to cost almost nothing more to wind up an additional drive).
>
> After I decided to get a separate drive, I mostly looked at the options on
> NewEgg, and the 7K200's seemed popular:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145160
>
> Personally, I don't need 200GB (I do like the idea of a faster drive
> though)
> so I got the 100GB version from ZipZoomFly.
>
> Reasonable?
>
>
> > PS, Hitachi hard drives over 80 GB at 7200 rpm have been greater than
> with
> > ANY other brand, so please keep us informed on your experience with
> them.
> > Why a Hitachi with a 3 yr warranty, over a Seagate with a five year
> > warranty?
> >
> >
> >
> > On Nov 11, 2007 5:45 AM, Scott Matthews <scott@turnstyle.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I ended up passing on Turbo Memory. Most seem to say that it provides
> > > modest, if any, boost, and some have had nasty crashes -- the crashes
> are
> > > supposedly addressed by getting an updated driver, and the performance
> > > benefits may be improved with later versions of Vista -- so that all
> just
> > > didn't seem worth it to me. PLUS you can get some of the benefits of
> Turbo
> > > Memory by using an SD card (I may be using the wrong card name there).
> > >
> > > As for RAM and HD, I decided to get Thinkpad minimum factory defualts,
> and
> > > buy the RAM and HD elsewhere. I price shopped a bit, and got 1GB from
> > > NewEgg
> > > for ~$25 and a 100GB Hitachi 7K200 from ZipZoomFly for ~$100 (NewEgg
> seems
> > > to have pricey shipping, but I was getting other stuff too --
> ZipZoomFly
> > > was
> > > free shipping).
> > >
> > > Getting a new/extra drive costs about the same as upgrading the
> default
> > > (in
> > > some cases, it's less) -- I plan on using the Vista Anytime Upgrade
> disk
> > > (supposed to come with the TP) to install Vista on the new drive.
> > >
> > > (I don't have the laptop or RAM/HD yet, so hopefully all goes well...
> ;)
> > >
> > > -Scott
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > Scott Matthews wrote:
> > > > > Hi all, I'm trying to configure a new Thinkpad, and was hoping
> some
> > > here
> > > > > could help with two questions:
> > > >
> > > > I would also love to have the answers to these questions, if anyone
> has
> > > > ideas.
> > > >
> > > > > 1) Is Turbo Memory worth having (fwiw, it'll probably be a 2GB RAM
> > > > > system) -- some people claim a solid boost in performance, others
> say
> > > little
> > > > > difference, and some say they get blue screens -- does anybody
> here
> > > have
> > > > > Turbo Memory in a Thinkpad? If so, what do you think?
> > > > >
> > > > > 2) The current drive selection is:
> > > > > 80GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm Serial ATA (2.5")
> > > > > 120GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm Serial ATA (2.5") [add $26.25]
> > > > > 100GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm Serial ATA (2.5") [add $60.00]
> > > > > 160GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm Serial ATA (2.5") [add $60.00]
> > > > > 160GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm with Disk Encryption [add $97.50]
> > > > > 160GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm [add $135.00]
> > > > > 200GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm with Disk Encryption [add $285.00]
> > > > >
> > > > > I like the idea of getting a faster 7200rpm, but there has been a
> fair
> > > > > amount of chatter on the list about trouble with 7200rpm drives.
> Are
> > > 7200rpm
> > > > > drives too failure prone? Do they get much hotter/noisier than the
> > > 5400rpm
> > > > > drives? Lastly, do the reliability/heat/noise differ by drive
> size?
> > > (for
> > > > > example, is 100GB 7200rpm ok whereas 160GB 7200rpm is a common
> > > > > troublemaker?)
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Thinkpad mailing list
> > > > Thinkpad@stderr.org
> > > > http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Thinkpad mailing list
> > > Thinkpad@stderr.org
> > > http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > ________
> >
> > I believe everything happens for a reason.
> > Usually, the reason is that somebody screwed up.
> >
>
>
-- ________ I believe everything happens for a reason. Usually, the reason is that somebody screwed up. _______________________________________________ Thinkpad mailing list Thinkpad@stderr.org http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpadReceived on Sun Nov 11 12:32:29 2007
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sun Dec 02 2007 - 00:00:10 EST