3 ms·

So, given that demo, does a single SSD perform substantially better enough on a normal laptop to warrant the expenditure yet? (Last I heard, standard advice was

by mcav 18y ago

So, given that demo, does a single SSD perform substantially better enough on a normal laptop to warrant the expenditure yet? (Last I heard, standard advice was to wait until the price drops.)

wmf 18y ago
It depends on your impatience. The X25-M has already dropped about 2X in price to $400.
old-gregg 18y ago
Only if the drive is based on Intel's MLC or, even better - Samsung's SLC flash. Regular (cheap) MLC-based SSDs are good only at reading big sequential files and lose out to 7200rpm drives when it comes to many small writes. I can't find a ling to a guy who blogged about his disappointing experience compiling C/C++ sources on a regular MLC drive, but I googled Linus Torvald's experience with Intel: http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/so-i-got-one-of-new-intel-ssds.html http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/so-i-got-one-of-... I personally find that I just have all my software open all the time, most of what I need gets pre-cached in 4GB of RAM I have, and I never reboot, i.e. no need to restart anything [unless, of course, freaking Adobe Flash freezes my Mac]
- sho 18y ago
  This anandtech review was very helpful to me: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403 http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=34... Gives a lot of detail about the various types of SSDs and why the intel is currently the best bet. Warning, reading it might cause you to go into a "gear lust trance" and spend a lot of money.
Encosia 18y ago
The 128gb Samsung SSD in my Dell M1330 is amazing. I don't regret a penny of the upgrade cost. When I got it, I ran benchmarks against my desktop's 10k RPM HDD: HDD: http://encosia.com/photos/things/drive-benchmark-10k.png http://encosia.com/photos/things/drive-benchmark-10k.png SSD: http://encosia.com/photos/things/drive-benchmark-SSD.png http://encosia.com/photos/things/drive-benchmark-SSD.png
timtrueman 18y ago
Yes. It's definitely changed my computing life. Everything is instant and I can do things I can't do on my slightly more powerful but SSD-less work laptop. http://flickr.com/photos/ttrueman/3051697418/ http://flickr.com/photos/ttrueman/3051697418/
tutwabee 18y ago
I have a 64GB SSD in my laptop and I love it. Upon a clean Ubuntu install my system booted in 28 seconds. After tweaking my system some I got my boot time down to 12 seconds. I tried opening OpenOffice after watching this video and found that OpenOffice writer opens in less than 1 second and opening all Office applications except for database and impress takes less than three seconds 3. The difference between SSDs and HDs is definitely noticeable.

by mcav 18y ago

So, given that demo, does a single SSD perform substantially better enough on a normal laptop to warrant the expenditure yet? (Last I heard, standard advice was to wait until the price drops.)

wmf 18y ago

It depends on your impatience. The X25-M has already dropped about 2X in price to $400.

old-gregg 18y ago

Only if the drive is based on Intel's MLC or, even better - Samsung's SLC flash. Regular (cheap) MLC-based SSDs are good only at reading big sequential files and lose out to 7200rpm drives when it comes to many small writes. I can't find a ling to a guy who blogged about his disappointing experience compiling C/C++ sources on a regular MLC drive, but I googled Linus Torvald's experience with Intel: http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/so-i-got-one-of-new-intel-ssds.html http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/so-i-got-one-of-... I personally find that I just have all my software open all the time, most of what I need gets pre-cached in 4GB of RAM I have, and I never reboot, i.e. no need to restart anything [unless, of course, freaking Adobe Flash freezes my Mac]

sho 18y ago
This anandtech review was very helpful to me: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403 http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=34... Gives a lot of detail about the various types of SSDs and why the intel is currently the best bet. Warning, reading it might cause you to go into a "gear lust trance" and spend a lot of money.

Encosia 18y ago

The 128gb Samsung SSD in my Dell M1330 is amazing. I don't regret a penny of the upgrade cost. When I got it, I ran benchmarks against my desktop's 10k RPM HDD: HDD: http://encosia.com/photos/things/drive-benchmark-10k.png http://encosia.com/photos/things/drive-benchmark-10k.png SSD: http://encosia.com/photos/things/drive-benchmark-SSD.png http://encosia.com/photos/things/drive-benchmark-SSD.png

timtrueman 18y ago

Yes. It's definitely changed my computing life. Everything is instant and I can do things I can't do on my slightly more powerful but SSD-less work laptop. http://flickr.com/photos/ttrueman/3051697418/ http://flickr.com/photos/ttrueman/3051697418/

tutwabee 18y ago

I have a 64GB SSD in my laptop and I love it. Upon a clean Ubuntu install my system booted in 28 seconds. After tweaking my system some I got my boot time down to 12 seconds. I tried opening OpenOffice after watching this video and found that OpenOffice writer opens in less than 1 second and opening all Office applications except for database and impress takes less than three seconds 3. The difference between SSDs and HDs is definitely noticeable.