Yes it definitely speeds up read/write performance in disk access. I have two 80GB drives in a RAID-0 array with a 16k stripe and cluster size and it zooms along compared to just having one drive operating.
Correction, RAID-0 is a striped array and RAID-1 mirrored. And relatively speaking RAID-0 isn't really true RAID since there is no mirroring, meaning no redundancy. :smile:
And on another note with the introduction of the SATA interface, the older parrallel interface may also be referred to...
I use Opera, since version 7.10, and Mozilla Firebird. Both are excellent replacement browsers for IE in my view, with Firebird loading pages faster... for me anyway.
You could try giving it good ventilation, mounting it so air can flow under the base could help, just a guess seeing as I don't own a laptop. I think you can also buy small fans that attach to the expansion card ports. :)