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.

*Thanks to mindless for allowing to me to post his video.

Post from: EveryJoe

SSDs On Your Mac, Is It Time To Upgrade?

In a recent study by J.Gold Association they noted that companies actually save more in a three year period when investing on SSDs compared to standard disks. A computer with a standard disk would cost around $970 USD in warranty support and repair compared to a $715 USD savings on computers. The savings translate to over $214 USD is savings for a three year period.

While the numbers are fine, I think companies would save more by raising their employee’s awareness on taking care of their laptops to make sure the life of the hardware reaches it’s full depreciation period. The SSD savings is no guarantee as the SSD’s reputation might actually lessen the employee’s awareness of taking care of their hardware because they know how durable their product is.

Image from the here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Companies Save Money from SSDs

The rise of ultraportables has triggered a race to develop ever-bigger solid-state drives, and Samsung is in the lead. Not only is their upcoming 256GB SSD twice as big as their previous model, it’s also twice as fast at 200MBps read and 160MBps write.

The drive uses multi-level cell (MLC) technology that’s cheaper to produce than traditional single-level cell SSDs. Samsung claims improvements to the drive controller will make this baby last as a hard drive, if not longer. 2.5-incher for traditional notebooks out in September, 1.8-incher for ultraportables in Q4.

(Via Electronista and Engadget.)

Post from: EveryJoe

Samsung Announces 256GB SSD