With 1TB drives going for $100, why get one of these?

because not everyone needs 1TB of space and with the 40ish dollars, you can pick up a DVD+/- RW drive and 2GB of RAM.

bacon uses a new 2x320GB platter design.
Wow! whats next 500GB Platters? these guys are amazing!

This was the smallest size they had on the new Dell I got. I don't need that much space for the OS.

#3, Seagate has a new 7200.12 500GB single platter drive. Not that I would buy one, though (and I used to be a dedicated Seagate customer), as they never really got all the problems worked out with their 7200.11 line. By problems, I'm not referring to random hardware failures (all manufacturers have those) but instead to the firmware clusterfsck that has plagued the 7200.11 line.

I now own both a Western Digital Black Edition 640GB and a Western Digital Blue/SE16 640GB. These are the first Western Digital drives that I've bought for my own use in years, and they are both performing very well. The drive listed in Ben's hot deal is the Blue/SE16 640GB.

EDITed to add: I realize that you were probably being a little sarcastic, as the 2x320GB platter design is not new by any definition of the word.

#1, #2: 1tb hard drives are going for $80.

#3: Seagate 7200.12 drives already have 500gb platters.

Thanks guys..... but I was just making fun of Ben with his NEW 320GB DESIGN...

So... is the AAKS black, blue, or green? My inquiring mind wants to know.

Thanks! I use the 1GB WD Caviar-Black as my system drive and it's really fast. Still, this is tempting...