Samsung has announced that it is shipping its highest-capacity, 7200rpm hard disk drive for laptops. According to the company, the new Spinpoint MP4 can achieve a maximum data transfer rate of 189MB/sec, has a seek time of 11milliseconds, and will come in capacities of 250GB, 320GB, 500GB and 640GB.

Samsung says that the 7200rpm speed gives the drive a 30 percent performance advantage over 5400rpm models. In addition, the Spinpoint MP4 comes with 16MB of onboard cache for improved performance and uses a fast SATA 3Gbps interface. The company has declined to release a suggested retail price for now.

Personally, I would have opted for a solid state drive (SSD) whenever possible for my own PCs, given its sheer performance advantage. However, it is undeniable that SSD remains far more expensive; and that the standard hard disk drive remains a good choice for most computing needs for now.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Electronista
- check out this article at Computerworld

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