PC Hacks

Hack #58. Choose the Fastest Hard Drive

Did you know that the "high performance Brand X" hard drive inside your PC is probably not the highest performance version of the drive that "Brand X" makes? PC manufacturers use the most current disk drive series available from their drive vendor, but typically only the most economical model of that series. Your PC maker buys a select version of the popular disk drive brands, so their "select" or so-called "OEM" components are not necessarily top of the line, even if you think your PC maker is the best in the world.

Tip

OEM, or Original Equipment Manufacturer, has become a generic term for products branded or labeled by a "big name" company like Hewlett-Packard or Dell that are actually made by another company. For example, that beautiful charcoal gray or black monitor with the Dell logo on the front is not actually manufactured by Dell but by Sony, NEC, Nokia, or a no-name assembler of PC parts with a license and a big order to produce a lot of Dell-branded products.

The big PC makers do not make disk drives; they make a special deal to get a lot of drives from either of three or four different drive makers and then put their name on them. The PC maker makes more profit if they can "OEM" a cheaper but adequately performing disk drive.

If you are a do-it-yourself PC builder, you'll also hear the term "OEM" in reference to some of the components that you can buy directly from an online retailer like Newegg (http://www.newegg.com). OEM parts ...