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Faster Disks are the BEST way of increasing Computer performance
Hi all
Assuming you have sufficient RAM and are not requiring the ultimate gaming experience the BEST way of improving your Computer performance is to install the FASTEST hard disks you can afford -- (or SSD's - but they are a bit more expensive).
Even on a humble Netbook swapping the standard 160 HDD for a faster 320 or 500 GB HDD made a SIGNIFICANT improvement in response time, application loading etc etc.
(You can keep the 160 HDD as an external HDD for say music/DVD's etc etc. An enclosure to convert it to a "Normal" USB ext HDD is available at any PC store -- very cheap so you don't have to throw the disk away).
My humble Netbook (ASUS LO 521) is now nearly as fast as my normal (Heavy) laptop.
Most stuff typical users do on a computer are highly I/O bound which means assuming there is enough RAM - around 2GB is good enough for typical use - then faster DISKS will yield much better performance than a QUAD CPU etc.
However most people usually ignore this advice and load machines up with expensive CPU's and loads of RAM and are then disappointed because performance improvments turn out to be quite small compared with the investment.
Note if you use Virtual Machines or are a Gamer then CPU and RAM is also important -- however my advice here is to the 100,000's of users who are just surfing, emailing, doing office type apps and playing multimedia (not CREATING it BTW) is to upgrade your HDD's to the fastest you can afford.
Cheers
jimbo