The Shine Of A Solid State Drive
Longer Battery Life
Initial reactions from users of the MacBook Air SSD model report an increased battery life expectancy of around 10-15%, providing them with an extra hour of productive work while on the go.
Without the moving mechanical parts that cause latency issues, SSDs are not impeded by spin-up, seek time, or rotational latency. This equates to faster boot times, faster application loading, and greater overall system responsiveness.
No Noise From Drive
While typing away on the MacBook Pro, two noises can be heard. The fans cooling the processor, and above all else, the hard-drive spinning up and down as required to access files. The Solid State Drive has no moving parts, which means the drive doesn’t spin - providing a noiseless working experience.
Reliability From Bumps
SSD stands for Solid State Drive. Solid State means no moving parts. No moving parts means the data cannot be destroyed by bumping a head of the drive which is reading or writing. Get the picture?
SSDs are extremely tolerance to shock and vibration caused by the user.
Quicker App Switching
While some standard hard-drives will still beat solid state drives when moving or copying large chunks of data, the SSD moves ahead with leaps and bounds when asked to open multiple applications at once, and while switching between them. It’s areas like this where you come to appreciate the SSD, as the comparable hard-drive chokes and burns under similar conditions.
Lower Heat Levels
With no spinning heads, Solid State Drives do not require any fans to keep them cool. SSDs produce little-to-no measurable heat because they have no moving parts, thus helping keep notebooks operating cooler.
The Flip Side
Although they exceed performance of most conventional notebook drives, SSDs are still at a price premium in the current market. With Apple charging a very competitive $999 for the 64GB SSD build-to-order option in the MacBook Air, been an early adopter of the technology is not a cheap thrill.
Prices are expected to fall at the rate of 40% per year, so the $999 drives we see today are expected to cost only $200 by 2010. By that stage I’d expect Apple’s full range of notebook computers will ship with a solid state drive as the standard configuration.
#1
Timothy Neilen → twitter.com/tneilen
i am looking forward to the day that i can purchase solid state drives cheaply. i’ll be sure to replace the majority of my drives with them once they are around the $200 usd mark. it seems that of all the hard drives that have failed it’s been most common for a moving part of them to malfunction, so no moving parts is a big bonus.
#2
Michael Yurechko → mikeyur.com
I got my MacBook Air 2 weeks ago and I opted for the regular 80GB drive rather than the SSD because of the price. $1000 is a lot of money to upgrade the drive.
#3
Nick Humphries → nicklog.com
Doesn’t a SSD have a shorter life span than regular HDDs because of limited write/erase cycles?
#4
Henning Stedtnitz → www.firstofall.net
The noise is the decisive factor for me. Heat is a bonus, but I really do need my laptops to be silent.
#5
adrian → www.navitronic.co.uk
not sure the point of this article…
have you used a solid state drive?
do you provide any benchmarks?
#6
Glenn Wolsey → www.glennwolsey.com
Yes I have, and were benchmarks needed? Nothing was mentioned on that part, if someone’s looking for benchmarks - they’ll search for them.
This is a pro/con article.
#7
rmaspero → www.rmaspero.com
The hat and noise are huge + points and the quicker app start up and switching is great too. I think we will see a larger price drop than predicted as newer and larger drives come out.
#8
JamesJust a little nitpick, but 40% per year would make the price $360 in two years, not $200. The 40% reduction in 2009 would 40% of $1000, but the reduction in 2010 would be 40% of the 2009 price, not the original price.
#9
anonThe speed issue is not entirely true. Read this:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9080838&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_feat
#10
Timothy Neilen → twitter.com/tneilen
While you raise a valid point anon there is no point in trying to prove that point if you insist on signing your name as anon.