I bought this hard drive as an upgrade for my Dell Vostro 1500. The performance boost is incredible.
I would say that my general feeling is that this hard drive is twice as fast as the stock 5400 RPM drive.
Not only is it faster and has a larger capacity, but it is quiet as well. There is almost no noise difference between when this drive is idle and when it is fully operational.
There decrease in battery duration is marginal, I haven't measured it exactly but my feeling is that is about the same as the stock drive.
Overall I am really impressed with this drive and I warmly recommend it to anyone who is fed up with slugish laptop drive performance.