A 200GB hard drive upgrade for your MacBook or MacBook Pro

Got $500 bucks? Need a larger single drive in your shiny new MacBook or MacBook Pro? Care more about battery life than RPMs? Then head over to MacService and they'll hook you up with a large, 4200RPM drive upgrade for a cool $445 (i tallation and Ground shi ing included) or $494 (includes i tallation and overnight shi ing). The shi ing costs are there because you have to send your precious portable to them in Santa Clara, CA to have the upgrade done.

Or you could just order a new MacBook/MacBook Pro from A le and get the 200GB drive option for only $200 more, which is surprisingly inexpe ive for an A le BTO option.

Or you could buy a 200GB 2.5-inch SATA drive yourself and use one of those handy iFixIt guides to do your own i tallation. But I can't find the drives for sale anywhere. If I had to gue , I'd say they'll street-price for about $300.

Which drive are you getting with these upgrades? Well there are only two manufacturers rolling out 200GB notebook drives that I know of. There's the Toshiba MK2035< an>G and the Fujitsu < an>MHV2200BT, so it's one of those. Both utilize perpendicular magnetic recording technology, which is fancy talk for cramming a whole lot of data onto 2 tiny platters. There may be other 200GB that I am just not aware of. It's been known to ha en.

Worth it? For some, no doubt. And although I kid about 4200RPM drives being slow, there are several folks who know far more about this kind of thing than I do that swear the technology used on these drives makes them almost as fast, if not faster, than the "standard" 5400RPM notebook drives when it comes down to real world use. 7200RPM may be better, of course, but only the serious pros probably need that for audio and video and such.

How many of you are actually co idering or have already ordered a 200GB drive for your MacBook or MacBook Pro? Did/will you BTO from A le, DIY or ship it off to a service provider?