The Barracuda XT is a spinning platter HDD and so should not be expected to benefit significantly from the new SATA revision. SSDs on the other hand have already maxed out the transfer rate SATA 3Gbps. I suspect they would have seen the difference if they used a top of the line SSD.
This is good news all around, it's great to see things getting faster.
I have two 2048x1536 20 inch CRTs on my desk right now. You can get them dirt cheap ($100) if you look around. Even with their age, size, and proximity to each other the only real problem I've had is a bit of a convergence issue; usually nothing you can't fix with in a weekend with a little tinkering. For quality a good CRT is still the way to go, at least until SED and FED displays hit the market.
Here's the great part, fossil fuel based power plants can be much more efficient than cars because they can run hotter and don't have to worry about the safety of having extreme pressures within a meter of the drivers. I haven't dug up the numbers but the potential is there.
Mod parent up. This is a very good point.
If you try hard enough down also works. *ducks*
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.