Hi John,

>In context: several times I have been on the brink of purchasing a Dell XPS notebook. It has a P4 3.4HT . I'll be using it as a pseudo-server doing an enormous processing task, hence the desire for speed.
Did something very similar a few years ago. It was nice to have one of the then best laptops, but after 1.6 years the harddisk was dead. I am not sure whether it was a manufacturing problem with those 2.5's or the sometimes very long runs under full processor and disk load were adding to the problem by overheating most of the components. I put the machine if "working" in best position for heat dissipation, but perhaps it just wasn't meant to be. Got a new disk, but lost some work still - not a good deal.

>At a time when most manufacturers are putting desktop chips in notebooks, it seems weird there are no stats. such is life.

Makes you wonder if it is time to get rid of some stocks again if marketing has to keep such things secret.

regards

thomas