[bwanderson]

natmusak said:

Let's see...faster reads, faster boot up, no waiting for a disk to spin up, zero moving parts, read times remain constant regardless of space used up (HDD read times slow down quite a bit as they fill up), and an overall zippier experience. At the beginning of this year a piddley 64GB SSD cost around $1000. Now, for around half that price ($600), you can get one with twice the capacity (128GB).

Only $600 for a WHOLE 128gb? C'est incroyable! That's NEARLY affordable!

[natmusak]

[quote name='bwanderson']
>

natmusak said:

> Let's see...faster reads, faster boot up, no waiting for a disk to spin up, zero moving parts, read times remain constant regardless of space used up (HDD read times slow down quite a bit as they fill up), and an overall zippier experience. At the beginning of this year a piddley 64GB SSD cost around $1000. Now, for around half that price ($600), you can get one with twice the capacity (128GB).

Only $600 for a WHOLE 128gb? C'est incroyable! That's NEARLY affordable!

Well at the beginning of 2008, anyone would have called me crazy if I had said in less than a year we'd have a 128GB SSD for less than a thousand, let alone around half that price. By the end of 2009, 256GB SSDs will be on the market and they could very well sell for what 128GB SSD are selling for now. 128GB is enough for many people. 256GB is enough for most people. If Apple can get an SSD into a base model of any of their laptops by mid-year, perhaps to coincide with Snow Leopard (which is supposed to have a reduced footprint compared to Leopard), SSDs could really take off.

[bwanderson]

[quote name='natmusak']
>

bwanderson said:

> Only $600 for a WHOLE 128gb? C'est incroyable! That's NEARLY affordable!
Well at the beginning of 2008, anyone would have called me crazy if I had said in less than a year we'd have a 128GB SSD for less than a thousand, let alone around half that price. By the end of 2009, 256GB SSDs will be on the market and they could very well sell for what 128GB SSD are selling for now. 128GB is enough for many people. 256GB is enough for most people. If Apple can get an SSD into a base model of any of their laptops by mid-year, perhaps to coincide with Snow Leopard (which is supposed to have a reduced footprint compared to Leopard), SSDs could really take off.

When I can buy a 500gb SSD for $120, we'll talk.

[ChasmoeBrown]

I don't argue the goodness or desirability of the SSDs. I just that the last few driveS I've bought were TB drives. (Big S for multiple drives - "thinaks" to Handbrake.) I'm sure SSDs are great for the MBA, but I'm looking to stock multiple RAID 5 devices. A 1 TB external mechanical can be had for $120, less in an Xmas sale, less for internal drives. And I've not had a single problem (knock on wood) with any mechanical drive for years now (since I stopped buying a certain make).

$600 for 64GB vs. $120 for 1000GB - you don't need to be a mechanical engineer to do the math. :-)
. .

Side note: I'm always checking the sale flyers that come with our Sunday newspaper. In this area, the "Office" stores (Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, etc.) have better sale prices for computers & accessories than the computers stores! Again, in this area, "Best Buy" never seems to be just that.

[hmurchison]

SSD is clearly the future.

Frankly I don't even suspect that I'll need a 512GB SSD.

I view SSD as the ideal solution for data that needs performance storage. Saving big movie files
on SSD makes little sense unless you're serving those files and need fast throughput.

Consumers are going to move to SSD and likely use networked storage for their large files. Already you
have a plethora of lowcost NAS devices from Thecus, Synology, QNAP and more that not only store your
data but allow remote access and a bunch of other features. And then there's Drobo as well.

You simply cannot beat SSD for performance unless you're buying inferior SSD tech.

This Toshiba drive is rated at 240MBps read and 200MBps write. You could put a 15K drive in your computer and not see that level of throughput. If you have a quad core computer ...you're not maximizing it's potential unless you have the adequate RAM and storage subsystem to keep those cores working.

Consumers need to be savvy and start planning their tiered storage and leveraging low cost home networks.

[alexbates]

Any guesses about how much the 512GB SSD will cost? I bet it will be well over $1000.

[DIESEL_X]

Pro's and Con's more like...

I've just received my new MacBook Pro 17" 'unibody' & naturally gone into debt doing so, more so having opted for the 8GB RAM & 2.93GHz processor option which added added a considerable amount of money (oh well.. never mind). However my impressions of the unit do far are both good and bad.

Firstly, I 'held-off' from also upgrading to Apple's 256GB SSD option (Samsung SSD) knowing that Toshiba's 512GB is around the corner, with the Tosh having that much needed double the capacity ar 512GB and possibly the fastest MLC NAND read & write times yet!

Secondly, only '1' (yes one) Firewire Port where'as the previous MacBook Pro 17" had 'two' albeit one 800 & one 400 but that's better than this, i.e. one could be used for a FireWire 400 soundcard and one for a Firewire 800 external Mass Storage HDD.. Jesus, what's Apple's problem of late with the Firewire interface! Bizare and stupid is the word that comes to mind.

I could go on about some other negative points but I'll leave that for now because there are many good points and features too, however I want to go back to the SSD drives. One thing that is being kept from us all, is the fact that the majority of SSD drives being made available to us now an soon are MLC and not SLC. This troubles me because the MLC just doesn't have the superior characteristics, reliability, dependability, longetivity, accuracy, error free probability (having far less cell degradation from zero deletes and writes) as that possessed by the SLC which tend to be used/recommended for Enterprises/Banks & Mission/Data critical servers where data loss and errors are not tollorated. Unfortunately it all comes down to the current price of SLC NAND technology at present.. Maybe SLC type SSD's will become cheaper in the very near future, I really hope so as I would feel slot safer storing my data on that type of SSD units.