SSDs On Your Mac, Is It Time To Upgrade?

Juan Magdaraog — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:09:10 +0000

We are the “I want it now” generation. We want everything faster, done quicker. From fast food, to high-speed internet connections, when we want things, we want them now. This goes the same for computers. We want faster processors, bigger memories for faster performance and faster hard drives. But quickness comes at a price. The question that crossed my mind recently is that is if it’s worth getting an SSD or Solid State Drive for my Mac now?

There are times that I feel my MacBook Pro is a bit slow. The main culprit really is the hard drive. I’ve got a decent processor (2.53 Ghz), adequate memory (4GB) but my hard drive is just 5400 rpm. That’s where the bottleneck is. When I’m multi-tasking and the Mac needs to write to the hard drive because the RAM is full it takes quite awhile and that plainly sucks. Especially if you’re trying to beat a deadline and your computer can’t keep up with you.

You can get a Patriot 128GB SSD at Fry’s for around $399.99. That’s still quite a big difference from a regular laptop hard drive. You can get a 250GB 7200 rpm laptop drive for less than a $100. That’s quite a disparity both in size and price. But you’re paying for speed. Is that price difference worth it.

A friend of mine recently purchased a SSD for his MacBook Pro and posted a video on YouTube showing of the performance. In the video he proceeds to launch all the apps he has on his dock. The MacBook Pro performs quite nicely. In my experience usually when I launch Photoshop and Parallels, my MacBook Pro almost grinds to a halt. His barely breaks a sweat.

Other videos around the net also show comparisons between SSD and ordinary drives. The difference is very noticeable. You get quicker boot times, you’re able to multitask better because apps run faster.

Is the huge price difference worth it? In my honest opinion, as of now regular consumers should hold off. Sure, you get the performance but it’s still quite expensive for the storage it offers. If you’re not using your Mac for work that requires a lot of multitasking then the SSD isn’t worth it yet. You’ll be paying a hefty price for storage.

Plus with most people’s data growing larger and larger because of all the digital photos, music and data they save, apart from your SSD you’re really need an external drive to offload data too and that will be added expense.

If you’re using your Mac for work and you multitask a lot then it might be beneficial. The amount of performance you’ll get from the drive might be well worth the premium.

As for me, as much as I would love the performance increase. I don’t need speed that much that will justify spending that much money. Maybe next year when prices drop further.