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Ssd Laptop - I Have To Share The Joy.......

BoonToong

By BoonToong
in IT and Computers

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BoonToong Advanced Member

BoonToong

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(This is Thai relevant simply because Thailand is my home)

A few months ago my laptop was beginning to cough a little. That, combined with a better-than-normal bank balance and concerns about work prompted me to think about replacing it.

As is usual for me, I consulted my son, who is a fountain of knowledge about these things; "Get an SSD laptop" he said. After him telling me all about it (and me pretending to fully understand) on my last visit to the UK I treated myself to an HP Folio 13.

HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!

Where do I begin? Very fast booting (less than 10 seconds), much faster processing and greatly improved battery life (of about 6 hours) are enough to make me want to share the joy with you all.

I confess to buying an I-Pad a few months ago too (despite my son telling me I didn't need it) and I have to be honest and say that the SSD laptop makes my I-Pad redundant. The biggest change for me is that I can now take my laptop on a long-haul flight, do some work, and watch the latest episode of my favourite Comedy show.

So, anyone in a similar situation of needing to replace your existing laptop, then have a look at SSD; you won't be disappointed.

(SSD = Solid State Drive)

(Yes, I need to get out more)

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BoonToong Advanced Member

BoonToong

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It all depends on what the person needs. If you have 100 gigabytes of music and you want to keep them on your laptop, then an SSD laptop isn't good value.

Absolutely right Thaicruze; my life right now is about work and travelling (for work). But...........

I love music (budding, part-time musician) and I am still able to carry as much music as I need

I thank you smile.png

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BoonToong Advanced Member

BoonToong

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It all depends on what the person needs. If you have 100 gigabytes of music and you want to keep them on your laptop, then an SSD laptop isn't good value.

I bought a 128GB SSD for 50 quid. Seems good value to me...

How? Where? Who? What? Why? When?

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Dork Gold Member

Dork

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"the SSD laptop makes my I-Pad redundant"??? What does having SSD versus a standard HDD with "platters" have to do with making your iPad redundant? I'm just curious what you believe the connection to be.

I think what the op means is the increase in speed especially on boot and wake makes the user experience similar to using an Ipad.

With an SSD notebook running Windows 8 you can get cold boot to logon screen in 6 seconds and wake from sleep in 1 or 2 seconds which means you can stop & start what you are doing in much the same way as an Ipad.

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flash77 Explorer Member

flash77

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Like others, I also recommend a SSD as a great upgrade option for old laptops (and PCs).

About 12 months ago I put a 60GB SSD in a 5yr old PC in my office. The PC went from "needs to be replaced asap" to "dam_n, I can't find an excuse for a new PC". Admittedly I also upgraded from 1 to 2GB of RAM at the same time. I only stopped using it recently due to a power supply failure.

About the same time I replaced the 160GB hard disk in my 3yr old netbook with a 60GB SSD. Again, the performance increase was well worth it. I also bought a 150 Baht 2.5inch USB hard disk enclosure. Put the old hard disk in it, and carry it around with my 100GB of music when I need to.

For me, changing from hard disk to SSD has given the most noticeable performance increase of a component upgrade that I can remember over the past decade.

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LadyHeather Advanced Member

LadyHeather

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I have both, my original bulky and heavy laptop with a large harddrive that I use for music and movies and then a fabulous Asus Zen 13 inch SSD hard drive computer that cost me a pretty penny but has become my go to computer for all use. I tend to listen to online radio anyway so find that I didn't really need to keep all that storage anyway. Old files that I no longer use get moved to an external hard drive.

Super fast, boot up is amazing and light. My laptop weighs around a kilo and it is perfect for work/travel.

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BoonToong Advanced Member

BoonToong

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"the SSD laptop makes my I-Pad redundant"??? What does having SSD versus a standard HDD with "platters" have to do with making your iPad redundant? I'm just curious what you believe the connection to be.

I bought an I-pad because I wanted to do some work on long-haul flights but my old laptop certainly wasn't up to the task, especially on battery life. But the most I could do was read and review documents and tapping the screen to make changes wasn't floating my boat (I know I could have bought another app and a keyboard but that just seemed clunky).

My new laptop allows me to do all the work that I want and also allows me to watch a movie when I need a break from boring documents.

Anyone want to buy an Ipad? (I should have listened to my son)

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UbonOz Silver Member

UbonOz

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My iPad is so easy just to pick-up and move anywhere there is a signal, much easier for travelling. Only problem with aniPad is when you need to print.

Laptop is great for home use.

Just updated iPad to iOS 6 today, will wait and see if it functions OK.

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UbonOz Silver Member

UbonOz

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"the SSD laptop makes my I-Pad redundant"??? What does having SSD versus a standard HDD with "platters" have to do with making your iPad redundant? I'm just curious what you believe the connection to be.

I bought an I-pad because I wanted to do some work on long-haul flights but my old laptop certainly wasn't up to the task, especially on battery life. But the most I could do was read and review documents and tapping the screen to make changes wasn't floating my boat (I know I could have bought another app and a keyboard but that just seemed clunky).

My new laptop allows me to do all the work that I want and also allows me to watch a movie when I need a break from boring documents.

Anyone want to buy an Ipad? (I should have listened to my son)

Have you tried Google Drive?

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BoonToong Advanced Member

BoonToong

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Have you tried Google Drive?

Dropbox works great for me; but that wasn't the issue with the I-pad, it was lack of keyboard and not having full functionality when working on my documents (I use excel, photoshop, word and powerpoint) on a long-haul flight

Edited by BoonToong
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Guest

Guest

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sDo you know if there is any new hybrid devices available?

SSD speed is great, but still expensive. Combining the two technologies could give a nice performance boost with large enough space for data files.

Something like 128GB SSD combined with 512GB HDD.

Some years back there was an hybrid with 4GB SSD and few hundred GB of HDD. The problem with this disk was that the drive wanted to organize files between SSD and HHD by itself. I'd like to have 2 separate disks /OS and /DATA within one drive.

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PaddyBKK Senior Member

PaddyBKK

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yes - I was surprised to read a recent (2012) report stating that SSD's & HDD's have a similar failure rate (at least in the first few years of use).

And then there is the big concern of recovering data from a failed SSD.

SSD's are relatively new - so I suppose regular & complete backups would be advisable.

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ITGabs Advanced Member

ITGabs

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You can get a 512Gb OCZ Vertex 4, one of the best ones out there, for under $400 now.

I read from many reviewers that the ssd ocz died in less than one year, sometimes only one month.

OCZ SSD's are known to have a significantly high failure rate. Some models are around 1/3 failure rates for example.

The company as a whole is shady:

1. If a reviewer publishes a negative article, OCZ will blacklist them and will no longer supply them with samples for their reviews.

2. If a customer posts a negative experience on their forums, the thread is deleted.

...amongst other issues. Don't believe me? Take 10 minutes and cross compare newegg reviews of OCZ with SSD's from my #1/#2 list. You will see that with 100's of sample pool comments, many OCZ SSD's have a 30-40% failure rate based on the reviews, while others brands from the #1/#2 list are significantly less.

Best SSD companies in order:

#1 - Intel & Samsung

#2 - Crucial, Kingston, Patriot

#3 - Everything else

#4 - OCZ

this should be good start for those that are looking for a good SSD...

Best SSDs For The Money: August 2012

Best prices for tested products

source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269.html

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rakman Gold Member

rakman

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yes - I was surprised to read a recent (2012) report stating that SSD's & HDD's have a similar failure rate (at least in the first few years of use).

And then there is the big concern of recovering data from a failed SSD.

SSD's are relatively new - so I suppose regular & complete backups would be advisable.

For any data you don't want to lose, regular backups should be in your normal routine as required.

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zzdocxx Gold Member

zzdocxx

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Like others, I also recommend a SSD as a great upgrade option for old laptops (and PCs).

About 12 months ago I put a 60GB SSD in a 5yr old PC in my office. The PC went from "needs to be replaced asap" to "dam_n, I can't find an excuse for a new PC". Admittedly I also upgraded from 1 to 2GB of RAM at the same time. I only stopped using it recently due to a power supply failure.

About the same time I replaced the 160GB hard disk in my 3yr old netbook with a 60GB SSD. Again, the performance increase was well worth it. I also bought a 150 Baht 2.5inch USB hard disk enclosure. Put the old hard disk in it, and carry it around with my 100GB of music when I need to.

For me, changing from hard disk to SSD has given the most noticeable performance increase of a component upgrade that I can remember over the past decade.

Great idea. What processor does your netbook have? Mine has got one of those Atom processors.

I've had an SSD drive on my desktop for a year and a half now, it is very quick and just the OS and programs are kept there.

My netbook is so slow it makes me crazy, perhaps an SSD would do the trick. That vs. buying a new "Ultrabook", as the SSD notebooks seem to be called nowadays.

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zzdocxx Gold Member

zzdocxx

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PS. I have looked at SSDs for sale previously. My desktop SSD did crash and it is true there was no recovering it, although I purchases an external case for it and tried to get it up and running again.

Obviously I have a large HD as well so I didn't lose any data, it was mainly a convenience issue of programs and settings and so forth. Backing up everything with Acronis now.

What I wanted to say though, was that when I was looking at the SSds, my computer whiz friend advised me to look at the reviews on NewEgg, and to sort the search result by average review score. That is when I realized that certain models do have high failure rates.

As someone mentioned above. The overall failure rate may be the same but I'm hoping to weed out the high failure models by looking at the reviews.

Also there's the issue of what can be recovered from an SSD that is toast.

On my ipad, sure everything (which isn't much) is kept on the SSD. But on other devices, aren't they using the SSD for the OS and programs, and putting data on a HD? Sure Windows 7 tends to want to put files in my SSD drive, so every now and then I have to move a few things over.

PSS. It seems that W7 takes up about 25G on my SSD.

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ITGabs Advanced Member

ITGabs

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I made my own research about the SSD failures.

I found something interesting, it's the controller of the OCZ SSD that seems to fail when the system sleep especifical this controller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SandForce, many people recommended keep upgrading the firmware, use Hibernate and not Sleep, and avoid the Sandforce controller

in wikipedia have a list of the brands that use the sandforce controller.

OCZ is a good brand but for SSD as some customers says is like playing lotery

the Sandforce controller is not only in OCZ, the brands include Kingston, Corsair, Intel, Mushkin, ScanDisk, Patriot,etc. The unique difference is that OCZ use sandforce in 13 models while the other popular brands use the sandforce for 3 or 4 models, so bad for sandforce they looks to have the problem.

Vertex 4 not use Sandforce controller.

After a little hours of research I have my option

Samsung 830 SSD

Best SSDs for ~$230: Performance Option 256 GB

Samsung 830           256 GB
Sequential Read           560 MB/s
Sequential Write       525 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active) 0.12 W
Power Consumption (Idle)   0.08 W

Tomshardware note:

Samsung's free game bundle doesn't seem to be available any more. However, the 830 continues on as a strong performer. This especially holds true if you own a notebook; the 830 is one of the most efficient drives that we've ever tested. For that reason, we have no qualms recommending the 256 GB 830, even though it's a little pricier than Crucial's m4.

Aditional Samsung is the unique HDD manufacter that jump into the SSD market, keeping the good quality in HDD and RAM, probably not the best products but average good, and longer warranty, 3 years in HDD and in SSD too!!, plus many other products in other areas that are pretty good also.

http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MZ-7PC256B/WW-specs

coffee1.gif

Edited by ITGabs
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Chicog Star Member

Chicog

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I've read numerous complaints about the Vertex 3, even after firmware updates, but the 4 gets good reviews across the board and, as you said, it doesn't use the SandForce controller which seems to be the source of most problems.

That was one of the reasons I picked it. The other is performance.

No problems at all with it so far, and I haven't even bothered upgrading the firmware.

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ITGabs Advanced Member

ITGabs

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I've read numerous complaints about the Vertex 3, even after firmware updates, but the 4 gets good reviews across the board and, as you said, it doesn't use the SandForce controller which seems to be the source of most problems.

That was one of the reasons I picked it. The other is performance.

No problems at all with it so far, and I haven't even bothered upgrading the firmware.

I saw in many onlines store the vertex 4, nothing about the samsung 830

BTW I read more about and go a bit deep more.

"The major message behind SandForce is that the inexpensive MLC flash memory can be used in an enterprise computing environment with a 5-year expected life." :/

I didn't know that the MLC (multi level cell) operate with more states not only 0 and 1, in the HDD only have two poles but in these new cell of memory, the MLC is able to record 0 1 2 3 4 etc per cell and that is one of the big difference, since with MLC can duplicate or more the normal capacity, but the maintenance, and the power used is more.

From the wikipedia article can get 3 patterns in the SSD that speak about the type of controller/technology inside

1.- Low power ratio fast write/read speed = SLC (single level cell) old and safer tech but a bit expensive

2.- Average power ratio fast write/read speed = MLC algorithm Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH code) average price

3.- Average power ratio half write speed = MLC NAND_flash old tech, but cheap.

interesting for me. left the white or black (binary) and go for the gray tones is a big step in computing and closer more the human brain

one more thing! http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-vertex-4-sata-iii-2-5-ssd.html#overview

the OCZ vertex 4 have 5 years warranty so it's a good option too

Edited by ITGabs
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kkerry Gold Member

kkerry

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Samsung 830 is certainly one you see recommended a lot and I've always been happy with Samsung drives. Not always the top performer but their reliability has been very good for a number of years now.

If you have access to purchasing from the US then there have been some great SSD buys lately, especially on some of the lesser known brands, prices are really coming down. I just got a 128GB for $79 to use in my travel laptop.

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