Hard drive manufacturer Seagate has recently announced that they will no longer produce 7200 RPM laptop-sized hard drives after 2013. I have to say, considering the rate at which solid state technology is progressing, I’m not too surprised.
For those who don’t know, when people talk about 7200 versus 5400 drives they are talking about the rotational speed of the platters. 5400 is the standard laptop drive speed. 7200 RPM (revolutions per minute) is the rate at which most desktop drives and some laptop drives spin. There isn’t much difference between the two, however, a faster speed drive means a little more access speed from your computer, which is the reason some prefer 7200 RPM drives. The trade-off is increased heat, vibration, and battery drain.
Editor’s note — Apple laptops have always shipped with 5400 RPM drives for these reasons. In desktops, these factors mean little. It’s only recently that they have offered some 7200 RPM options on the 15-inch machines.
You can almost watch the prices of solid-state drives drop in real-time. It is overly apparent that they are the future of computer storage, and will at some point be just as affordable per gigabyte as regular spinning drives. Seagate will still be producing 5400 RPM hard drives indefinitely, but I suspect complete solid state implementation is not too far off in the future of laptops.