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SSD Won't Make Sense In Laptops For Two Years
kgagne writes "While solid state disk drives can vastly improve random read performance and are perfectly suited to most mobile devices, many operations are sequential in laptops and desktops and involve writes where SSDs most often lose to magnetic hard disk drives in performance. While introducing multi-channel flash memory controllers and interleaving the NAND flash chips increases performance, it will still be about two years before the cost versus benefit ratio will make sense to install SSD in your laptop or desktop PC, according to a Computerworld story. '"I think you need to get to 128GB for around $200, and that's going to happen around 2010. Also, the industry needs to effectively communicate why consumers or enterprise users should pay more for less storage," says Joseph Unsworth, an analyst at Gartner Inc.'"
The small increase in performance isn't worth the several hundred in cost it would add to my laptops. I bought my laptop for $650, and a better HD just isn't worth increasing that to nearly $1000. YMMV.
Well, I use Linux/Windows as my servers, and use a Mac mini/G5 as my development environment, and even though I do now own an SSD laptop I know it makes sense.
Uses less power and can be dropped. My laptop is a macbook (not pro) and I know it is overkill with what I do with it, so a macbook AIR would be just the right thing to do if it had the correct pricing with SSD. But it doesn't, at least not for me.
No optical drive, limited HDD? I do not really care. For my visits to clients (of web projects) could be done on a 5 year old crap (if it wasn't windows and had a battery live of 10 minutes) so for me an AIR would be just fine.
Ohh... does it makes sense on WINTEL? Do not know how Vista runs on an SSD and if you have any space on a 64GIG drive after installing VISTA. Not flaming, I really do not know.
I know, that if I had to travel more I would get an AIR with SSD, and it would perfectly satisfy my multimedia needs (just grab those 4-5 movies to HDD for the flight and you are set).
Just my 2c, but I am a (mostly web) developer, so all you sales people and myltimedia freaks might have a different viewpoint about the whole fuss.......
I think people are willing to pay a premium for extended battery life. If I can use my device more, it has more utility.
-Dave
"16GB for data is plenty for almost anybody."
Hahaha oh wow
Sure. If speed, durability, power, and acoustics are valueless to you.
For the rest of us, SSDs are worth a premium. The amount of that premium depends on the user and workload.
However, given the success of WD's Raptor line of drives, I would suggest that there's certainly a segment of the population who needs or thinks it needs faster rather than larger disk. And further that this segment is sufficiently large to support a business.
It's not just database users who are buying fast SSDs (which can hit 200MB/sec read and >100MB/sec write these days), and prices are plunging as a result.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Maybe its just me, but I fully expect 128GB SSD to go for much less than $200 by the end of 2010.
How much HDD space will you be able to buy by that time for $200? I'd say easily 10-15x capacity.
I feel like TFA is trying to set you up to accept higher prices on the hardware for a longer period of time.
SSD is merging onto the superhighway that is Moore's Law for HDD and I can't see settling for lower capacity and higher prices for more than another year or so.
Cube On! (http://stores.ebay.com/PuzzleProz)
Ever try to torrent something that isn't popular? Yeah. That's why you keep a local copy.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Also, the industry needs to effectively communicate why consumers or enterprise users should pay more for less storage," says Joseph Unsworth, an analyst at Gartner Inc.
MAGIC
Seriously, solid state electronics, even after years and years of being around them as an early 80's baby, still just seems like magic to me. I can't wait to get rid of every little motor whine in my computing world, even if it's another 10 years, that will be a happy day to have a powerful computer without any moving parts.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Let's see.
For a 1TB hard drive you would need 200+ DVDs.
1TB drive is $150, 200 DVDs would be about $120.
I think I'd rather just spend the extra $30 and get the hard drive since it's much faster, takes less physical space, is rewritable and I don't have to go digging around stacks of discs.
People who say that 16GB is enough are naive. It might be enough *for you*, but your needs don't represent everyone else's needs. For example, I own enough CDs to fill 30GB worth of space in MP3 compressed format. I own enough DVDs to fill 100GB if I compress each film down to only 1GB each. I work with image files that take 200-300MB for each master copy. I work with audio projects that take 500-1000MB each. The average size of a modern game is 5-10GB. Windows XP takes 4-5GB (while Vista takes about 15GB). Do you see where this is going?
So no, 16GB is FAR from enough space.
You do know that this is a nerd infested website. You can never get enough data storage.
signature is pants
wasn't we talking about laptops? or you are planning to do video editing on the eee pc?
Contrary to popular belief, not every laptop is an eee pc.
as the parent said, 16+16gb is more than enough for a portable, if you use the damn thing as a portable!
If you use the damn thing the way you use a damn portable. Which probably means "for nothing particularly useful".
Lots of people here have jobs which require their laptops to be a portable workstation. That means both speed and size of the harddisk are important.
A co-worker just got a new laptop with SSD, and it boots Windows in about 2 seconds. I assure you there are many situations where that's well worth the money.