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>>Most notebooks have 5400 rpm harddrives to keep the heat down. Also, a 7200 rpm will drain the battery faster. Make sure the fan can handle it so you don't have shutdowns due to over heating. 7200rpm does improve speed and performance though in most cases. Check the performance specs though. In some cases, a 5400 rpm drive can actually perform better than a 7200 rpm one or very close. If the system has a 7200 rpm as an option, it should be designed to handle it though.
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>The above is news to me. I thought that 7200 rpm was simply better for all cases. Now, knowing what you are saying, at least if I buy a notebook with a 5400 rpm drive the battery will last longer.
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>>Did you check out Best Buy? In some cases, the systems built for Best Buy are not available through the manufacturer's website, or if they are by custom configuration, it costs much more to configure it yourself and buy from the manufacturer. You can test out the systems onsite and you can take it directly to Best Buy when you have a problem instead of going through the manufacturer. Check out the ones online that are only sold on the web from Best Buy as well.
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>All the Best Buy notebooks I looked at in stores have 5400 rpm drives. I also looked at some online at CompUsa and many specs do not indicate the speed of the hard drive. I usually presume in this case it to be 5400 rpm.
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>Thank you for your help.

One nice thing you can do on the Best Buy website is check the editorial reviews of the products. The editorial reviews will compare the laptop to other similar brands. Here is one low-cost one as an example (scroll down click on the Editorial Review tab):

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9149557&id=1218036213752&type=product

If you are configuring one yourself, then compare latency rates and transfer rates on the hard drives between 5400 and 7200 models.