Storage evaluation
The advantages of having a super-quick boot drive are patently obvious. Scan's Triad features a Western Digital Raptor X 150GB as its OS-loading drive, the other machines make do with capacious storage from HGST and Maxtor, with the Alienware and MESH PCs equipped with 1TB (2 x 500GB) and 500GB (1 x 500GB) storage, respectively. SCAN's system also features some phat storage from a single 750GB Seagate SATA monster.
Nothing much to choose between the SKUs with respect to USB2.0 and FireWire performance, however.