The Fourth Option: A Bigger Hard Disk
Technological advances have also been made in the realm of hard disks. If one takes a look at the current data transmission rates that are possible, then it would appear that a performance gain is realistic here too. Almost 30 MB per second are possible with the current IDE top models (e.g. Maxtor 54098U, 40 GB, 7200 rpm). A pleasant by-product is the reduction in access times.
Naturally we picked a model with a good price/performance ratio: the Seagate Barracuda ATA (ST320430A). This UltraDMA/66 drive costs less than $170, offers 20 GB and 7200 rpm and has both excellent data rates and access times according to current standards.
The current model is also available with 13 and 28 GB. The performance values are probably only minimally different.
Bigger Hard Disk - Office Applications
Exchanging our good old Quantum Fireball ST 3.2A with the top-level Seagate Barracuda ATA gave about an 8% performance gain - almost as much as upgrading system memory from 64 to 128 MB. A combination of both improvements gave the system a boost of almost 12%.
There is no need to go into the NT4 results here because they are exactly the same as the gains we had under Windows 98.
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