Monday, May 19,2008 @ 9:30am
Dell 1st to ship notebooks with 320GB, 7K RPM drives
Dell on Monday became the first PC builder to ship a new generation of hard drives with updates to its XPS notebook line. Each system will have the option of a 320GB Seagate Momentus 7200.3 drive that should bring desktop-like performance without a significant hit in storage; the 7,200RPM speed and doubled 16MB of cache should all but eliminate the bottlenecking that often occurs during game loading and other intensive tasks. The disk also provides a level of shock protection to avoid damaging the disk in most falls.
The Dell website has yet to be updated to reflect the new storage option, though it's not expected that any systems will come with the fast 320GB drive as standard. Dell's gaming division Alienware will also receive the option for "select" portables, says the announcement. Both updates are to come "soon."
Both Fujitsu and Hitachi have also revealed hard drives with similar capacity and performance, though neither has mentioned specific customers for their storage.