Pros: -Fairly quiet (and it doesn't make that strange occasional chirp sound that some SATA drives make). -Huge capacity

Cons: Runs rather hot. I'm using it in an external drive enclosure w/o cooling (I travel all the time and size is a big consideration, so no fans or active cooling). I'm a little concerned that it'll wind up cooking itself sooner or later. No big deal for people putting it in a full sized case with proper cooling. I'm buying a second one today to act as a backup in case my first does eventually get cooked...or banged around from travel.

Overall Review: So far I'm very pleased with this drive. The only negative I could come up with is that it runs quite a bit warmer than my previous SATA drives (I've used three others in the same external enclosure and this one is way hotter than the rest...but also more than twice the size).

Pros: -Able to use HDMI bitstreaming for HD audio codecs -Hardware acceleration for h.264 video -Picture looks great and the processor is fast enough for post-processing (Antialiasing, deinterlacing, etc.)

Cons: Not great for gaming (though I'm using this only for HTPC, so no big deal)

Pros: Low wattage (25W), good speed, large 6MB L2 cache, VT virtualization feature.

Cons: I spent a little more than I originally planned (I was looking at getting a slightly slower proc, but later decided to go for the P9500).

Overall Review: I decided to upgrade my HP dv5 laptop's processor because it lacked the Intel VT feature (I had the Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 processor). I wanted VT for VMware (I do a *lot* of work in VMware) and also for Windows 7's XP Mode. This processor doubled my L2 cache from 3MB to 6MB, added the Intel VT feature, increased my laptop's speed from 2.0 GHz to 2.53 GHz, and added the Intel Trusted Execution Technology feature (I'm not yet certain how useful that last feature is). This processor runs great and Newegg shipped it very quickly (I opted for the free UPS 3-day shipping, ordered on Mon morning and had it by Wed evening). The hardest part was carefully taking my laptop apart and then reassembling it after installing the new processor, but even that didn't take too long. I've stress tested my rig and everything's running fast and cool. Great purchase!