Hello friends, I was hoping someone would be kind to answer this questions. I'm familiar w/ desktop computers and know that 7200rpm is what you want rather than a 5400rpm hard drive. The new celeron M HP computer I purchased from Office Depot has a 40gb hard drive rated at 4200rpm. Is this average for a laptop (like 7200 is the desired speed for desktop computers). Any input is appreciated. Thanks

Yes, it's average for a laptop. Plus a slower spinning harddrive consumes less power. For laptops the usual priority is battery life, not top speed performance.

BTW, there are much more relevent ways to measure desktop system performance then just the rotational speed of the harddrive.

Western Digital do a 2.5" 5400rpm that uses the same power as a 4800 drive.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=102

if you after performance the 8MB Buffer is the way to go m8.

I have been using a samsung 40 GB 5400 rpm notebook drive in a external enclosure to back up data off my desktop it performs very well and is reasonably priced. it also has an 8 mb cache.