Solid State Drive

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Hi planning on getting a macbook air and was wondering whether the ssd made that much difference to the standard hd in terms of speed???
 
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It is faster yes. It is also going to last far less time. The very nature of Solid State memory is that when you write to it you damage it. So for $1000 more you will be loosing just under 20g of space, gaining speed, gaining power savings, and loosing life expectancy.

What it comes down to is that the number of write cycles in the life of a flash memory chip are quite low compared to standard hard drives. As they fail this will result in lowered drive capacity until something important gets lost.
 
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^^ your comment about write capacity is true, it's been researched and it's been found that the average computer user would have to use the drive far longer than a typical hard drive is used in order to reach that write limit.

You also missed an important benefit of flash memory. Unlike a hard drive, it has no moving parts, so the chance of failure is much, much lower. I predict that when flash memory becomes cheap enough it will not only be the preferred drive for mobile computing, but also the preferred drive for backing up important data.
 
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so which one would u reccomend then???
 
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Is it worth $1000 to you to loose 20 gigs of space and gain a bit of write speed? That is what it comes down to. I personally would never recommend spending over a grand of a 64gig hard drive.

As to the number of writes to fail, my issue is that these are new and it is hard to tell when used as a hard drive just how long it would take. As for the no moving parts meaning much less likely to fail, HDs don't fail all that often anymore due to mechanical failure. I can't remember the last time a HD failed for that reason that wasn't over 3-5 years old. Course I see your point it IS a potential benefit. I think just that the lower power consumption and faster boot time will be overshadowing it.
 
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Faster speeds, longer battery life, lower chance of failure and less heat all seem like great reasons to get a solid state drive. Unfortunately, $1000 is too steep a price to pay for those benefits. If it were $200 more, then I would definitely jump at the opportunity.
 
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Would I be correct to assume that the ssd is the same size as the macbook air pata hd??? It'd be interesting to see them make it an option on 2.5' sata macs as well... a high end option, but an option none the less. I wouldnt expect to see this before the summer or even fall.. cause I could see it potentially hurting macbook air sales.......
 
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The estimated life of a SSD is around 10-12 years of normal use.
 
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The best part of SSD apart from it's speed (if the OS utilises it correctly) is that it has no moving parts. So you can swing your notebook around, use it while commuting on a bumpy road and not worry about the drive head parking itself on the platters.
 
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Is it worth $1000 to you to loose 20 gigs of space and gain a bit of write speed?

The speed peice is debatable. You gain sequential read speed certainly, so booting up and launching apps is quicker. However writes, are slower (so virtual memory, or copying large files/installing apps).

I'd wait for some benchmarks to decide, because $1000 is a lot of money for less space and potentially a poorer performing drive than you get in a standard MacBook. Remember when Apple say it's quicker, they mean it's quicker than the 4200 rpm drive.
 
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One thing is for sure I guess. It's not worth it at the moment. The prices have to come down drastically for it to make any sense...
 
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I think SSD is the way forward, with price coming down ever so quickly. When my 5yr old HD 'packed' up few months ago, I really wish I had a HD without moving part. But I agree with goobimama, SSD is still too expensive, may be in few year's time.

About MBA, the stardard drive of 80G at 4200rpm is bit slow, even slower than the lowest spec MB, you have nothing to lose if you have money to spend and want to try latest techology, but think again... $1000...
 
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80gig is already not enough space, 64gig is so little it would make the things virtually useless. And without a firewire port for a decent external HD you are not looking at great solutions for external storage either.
 
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You don't need Firewire for a good external drive, USB is just as good.
 
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80gig is already not enough space, 64gig is so little it would make the things virtually useless. And without a firewire port for a decent external HD you are not looking at great solutions for external storage either.

Not for a strictly working computer. If I took all the personal programs, files and media off my MBP, I would be down from using nearly all of my HDD to about 30-40 GB.
 
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Yeah. And using a slimming app like Xslimmer or monolingual can really get that apps folder within control. 80GB (and even 64GB) is mighty sufficient for such a device.
 
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*Bump*
How fast is the Solid-state drive compared to the average 4200 rpm hard drive? Can it compare to ram ?
 
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One thing is for sure I guess. It's not worth it at the moment. The prices have to come down drastically for it to make any sense...

Agreed. Happily, like all things technology in nature, prices will come down, and quickly. In a few years, SSDs will be everywhere, and quite inexpensive. Think about how quickly the price of *big* LCD monitors has come down. Two to three years has made a HUGE difference.

For now, buy one if you like to be on the "bleeding edge". If you are one of those people, it is worth it. For the rest of us, if we simply wait a year or two, it will be much less expensive.
 
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*Bump*
How fast is the Solid-state drive compared to the average 4200 rpm hard drive? Can it compare to ram ?
It's not as fast as advertised. It sure had amazingly fast seek times though, but read/write timings are not out of this world. Certainly faster than 4200rpm, but nothing like RAM. It's main USP is that there's no moving parts...
 

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