5 ms·

Very surprised this made the front page. Everyone should have shifted to ssds years ago for laptops. The productivity win was a no brainer a very long time ago.

r00fus 7y ago
Going to an SSD is like going EV vs petrol car. You'll be blown away by how obviously inefficient decades-old technology feels. Even a cheaper SSD is much faster than a top-of-the-line HDD - and the analogy to EVs hold here as well.
- juliusmusseau 7y ago
  Yes, I was running Windows 10 on a 7200rpm drive. Reinstalled onto a cheap $50 SATA 256GB SSD (AOPEN SU800): night and day difference. Blew me away. Obviously M.2 or NVME or PCIE would be a lot better. But even old SATA still made a huge difference.
flukus 7y ago
Last time I got a new laptop (which probably was a few years ago now) the price just wasn't reasonable for a large enough SSD, 512GB is my minimum for it's occasional multimedia uses and database work. Even now prices have apparently come down but larger drives often only come with high end SKU's. Looking at the MS Surface page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/store/config/Surface-Laptop-2/8XQJKK3DD91B?crosssellid=surfacefamily4a&selectedColor=000000&preview=&previewModes= https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/store/config/Surface-Laptop-...) 512GB is only available if I also get 16GB of RAM and a core i7 model, which is well beyond my needs and desire to pay for. 1TB is only comes with the silver model. So even my next laptop might feature spinning rust, if any exist. On the plus side HDD's add a level of chunkiness I like in laptops.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  The surface laptop is uniquely awful among windows laptops for how hard it is to replace anything. For a normal laptop, the cost of self-upgrading to a 1TB SSD is $100-$170, and it takes less than five minutes to install.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    The Surface Laptop is microsoft seeing modern macbooks and going "Apple is not going far enough". Literally everything is soldered, and then the laptop is completely glued shut.
  - flukus 7y ago
    I see the same almost everywhere, on HP's site (https://store.hp.com/us/en/vwa/laptops/form=Standard-laptop https://store.hp.com/us/en/vwa/laptops/form=Standard-laptop) they have some cheap laptops with 1TB HDD's but even now the cheapest with 512GB SSD's start at 3 times the price. Upgrading myself is probably the best option, but there's a minefields of things I'm not confident with when it comes to mobile hardware. IME running linux, especially a lightweight distro, makes more of a performance difference than an SSD anyway, at least with my usage. Edit -also at $170 it would just about be doubling the price of an otherwise acceptable laptop, so hardly a huge win.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      The price gouging for larger drives is common all over. The inability to do it yourself is rare. There's very little that can go wrong when cloning a 2TB or less drive and it requires $10 of extra hardware. If you're happy with installing your OS from scratch, like you would when switching to linux, then there is basically zero reason to hesitate on putting in a new drive. Drive bays are designed for easy access.
- masklinn 7y ago
  > So even my next laptop might feature spinning rust, if any exist. On the plus side HDD's add a level of chunkiness I like in laptops. "Chunky" laptops will have replaceable parts (which really is not the case of the surface laptop). Getting an aftermarket TB SSD (whether m.2 or SATA) costs 100~200 and takes a few minutes to swap in. You do not want to BTO this sort of upgrades unless you know aftermarket upgrade is not an option (because everything is soldered as in the surface laptop or most modern MBPs), manufacturers way overprice RAM and storage.
mjevans 7y ago
For power users (as one of the other child posts states) the extra space afforded by HDDs did have a use case a couple years ago. As an application drive, or a drive in a device where the only other moving parts are input keys and fans, SSDs are completely the way to go. Even if dropped weirdly at least the data is probably recoverable. Unless it's cheep bulk or high-write turn over spinning rust makes less and less sense. Though the cost for bulk storage still favors it. (Given the write endurance, I'd also prefer SSDs to be at least half as expensive.)
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Power users can easily handle installing two drives. And if a laptop is letting you choose between a hard drive and an M.2 SSD, then it can also fit both at once.
  - mjevans 7y ago
    At least in the context and time frame I was referencing, a vast and overwhelming majority of laptops only had a single 2.5 "inch" drive slot. Also, I'm not aware (offhand) of any M.2 form factor spinning rust, which brings us more to the topic of types of flash memory.

r00fus 7y ago

Going to an SSD is like going EV vs petrol car. You'll be blown away by how obviously inefficient decades-old technology feels. Even a cheaper SSD is much faster than a top-of-the-line HDD - and the analogy to EVs hold here as well.

juliusmusseau 7y ago
Yes, I was running Windows 10 on a 7200rpm drive. Reinstalled onto a cheap $50 SATA 256GB SSD (AOPEN SU800): night and day difference. Blew me away. Obviously M.2 or NVME or PCIE would be a lot better. But even old SATA still made a huge difference.

flukus 7y ago

Last time I got a new laptop (which probably was a few years ago now) the price just wasn't reasonable for a large enough SSD, 512GB is my minimum for it's occasional multimedia uses and database work. Even now prices have apparently come down but larger drives often only come with high end SKU's. Looking at the MS Surface page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/store/config/Surface-Laptop-2/8XQJKK3DD91B?crosssellid=surfacefamily4a&selectedColor=000000&preview=&previewModes= https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/store/config/Surface-Laptop-...) 512GB is only available if I also get 16GB of RAM and a core i7 model, which is well beyond my needs and desire to pay for. 1TB is only comes with the silver model. So even my next laptop might feature spinning rust, if any exist. On the plus side HDD's add a level of chunkiness I like in laptops.

Dylan16807 7y ago
The surface laptop is uniquely awful among windows laptops for how hard it is to replace anything. For a normal laptop, the cost of self-upgrading to a 1TB SSD is $100-$170, and it takes less than five minutes to install.
- masklinn 7y ago
  The Surface Laptop is microsoft seeing modern macbooks and going "Apple is not going far enough". Literally everything is soldered, and then the laptop is completely glued shut.
- flukus 7y ago
  I see the same almost everywhere, on HP's site (https://store.hp.com/us/en/vwa/laptops/form=Standard-laptop https://store.hp.com/us/en/vwa/laptops/form=Standard-laptop) they have some cheap laptops with 1TB HDD's but even now the cheapest with 512GB SSD's start at 3 times the price. Upgrading myself is probably the best option, but there's a minefields of things I'm not confident with when it comes to mobile hardware. IME running linux, especially a lightweight distro, makes more of a performance difference than an SSD anyway, at least with my usage. Edit -also at $170 it would just about be doubling the price of an otherwise acceptable laptop, so hardly a huge win.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    The price gouging for larger drives is common all over. The inability to do it yourself is rare. There's very little that can go wrong when cloning a 2TB or less drive and it requires $10 of extra hardware. If you're happy with installing your OS from scratch, like you would when switching to linux, then there is basically zero reason to hesitate on putting in a new drive. Drive bays are designed for easy access.
masklinn 7y ago
> So even my next laptop might feature spinning rust, if any exist. On the plus side HDD's add a level of chunkiness I like in laptops. "Chunky" laptops will have replaceable parts (which really is not the case of the surface laptop). Getting an aftermarket TB SSD (whether m.2 or SATA) costs 100~200 and takes a few minutes to swap in. You do not want to BTO this sort of upgrades unless you know aftermarket upgrade is not an option (because everything is soldered as in the surface laptop or most modern MBPs), manufacturers way overprice RAM and storage.

mjevans 7y ago

For power users (as one of the other child posts states) the extra space afforded by HDDs did have a use case a couple years ago. As an application drive, or a drive in a device where the only other moving parts are input keys and fans, SSDs are completely the way to go. Even if dropped weirdly at least the data is probably recoverable. Unless it's cheep bulk or high-write turn over spinning rust makes less and less sense. Though the cost for bulk storage still favors it. (Given the write endurance, I'd also prefer SSDs to be at least half as expensive.)

Dylan16807 7y ago
Power users can easily handle installing two drives. And if a laptop is letting you choose between a hard drive and an M.2 SSD, then it can also fit both at once.
- mjevans 7y ago
  At least in the context and time frame I was referencing, a vast and overwhelming majority of laptops only had a single 2.5 "inch" drive slot. Also, I'm not aware (offhand) of any M.2 form factor spinning rust, which brings us more to the topic of types of flash memory.