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An SSD for Your Current Computer May Save the Cost of a New One (Video)
Obviously, the first performance enhancement you do on any computer you own is max out the RAM. RAM has gotten cheap, and adding more of it to almost any computer will make it faster without requiring any other modification (or any great skill). The next thing you need to do, says Larry O'Connor, the founder and CEO of Other World Computing (OWC), is move from a "platter" hard drive to a Solid State Drive (SSD). Larry's horse in this race is that his company sells SSDs, mostly for Macs. But he's a real evangelist about SSDs and computer mods in general, even if you buy them from NewEgg, Amazon or another vendor.
A big (vendor-neutral) thing Larry points out is that just because you have a Terabyte drive in your computer now doesn't mean you need a Terabyte SSD, which can easily cost $500. Rather, he says, all you need is a large enough SSD to contain your OS and software and whatever data you're working with at the moment, so you might be able to get by with a 120 GB SSD that costs well under $100. Clone your current main drive, stick in the new SSD, and if your need more storage, get another hard drive (or use your old one). Simple. Efficient. And a lot cheaper than buying a new computer, whether we're talking about home, business or even enterprise use. (Alternate video link.)
A big (vendor-neutral) thing Larry points out is that just because you have a Terabyte drive in your computer now doesn't mean you need a Terabyte SSD, which can easily cost $500. Rather, he says, all you need is a large enough SSD to contain your OS and software and whatever data you're working with at the moment, so you might be able to get by with a 120 GB SSD that costs well under $100. Clone your current main drive, stick in the new SSD, and if your need more storage, get another hard drive (or use your old one). Simple. Efficient. And a lot cheaper than buying a new computer, whether we're talking about home, business or even enterprise use. (Alternate video link.)
YEAH WE KNOW
Most laptops don't come with the ability to put in two drives so you can't have an SSD and platter. You'd have to have an external USB drive which most users would not want to lug around.
Many people I've known with 128GB SSD run out of space fast. I'd recommend at least 240GB. Another option for light users would be a hybrid SSD.
Put the 64GB in and use it as a ramdisk. Be blown away by the speeds.
The boot boost is irrelevant if you don't need to reboot very often so that benefit to Linux users questionable.
"Obviously, the first performance enhancement you do on any computer you own is max out the RAM"
What kind of clueless moron wrote that nonsense?
Well, you're wrong. 4GB is enough for almost every average user. Gamers need 8GB but no game I've ever heard of uses more than 5GB of total space while running. 16GB is basically video editing only. So no, don't max out the RAM just for the fun of it. Going from 4GB to 8GB won't do a thing for you if all you do is web browse. It would have absolutely zero impact on performance at all.
+4 insightful. Only on Slashdot. Let's analyze this...
You know every computer has a built in RAM disk. It's called cache. You should read how it works. Then you'll see why no one does this.