Macbook air 128GB SSD, true capacity?

I am thinking about getting the 128GB air (11 or 13) and was wondering after monolingual and other tweaks (I don't know any others) what is the default capacity. Is the 128 truly 128 or is 120gb or somthing than minus 10GB for the OS instal? The reason why I ask is because My itunes folder is 92gb and I expect to expand it another 10GB in the next 3 months. I know I want at least 12gb for apps and downloads so this is cutting it really close. I don't want to use an external drive or go for the 256GB one because I feel that is too much $$$ and/or trouble (always having to have an external drive plugged in for music, which this laptop would be used for 99% of the time). Also was thinking about getting the OWC 180gb, but how difficult and how much $ would I get for selling the 128GB parts on eBay?

 

It's 128GB, minus 15GB-20GB for OS X. You need the 256GB model for sure. Once SSD's fill up they slow down.

 

I agree with Mr.Mischief, the 128GB models isn't going to be enough for you if you must have all your iTunes on it.

 

Yes, get the 256gb, considering how it's recommended that you leave at least 10%ish of the SSD empty for maximum performance.

 

It is actually 120 (little bit above but not 121 gb). I would advice a new install if you are coming from a 500 gb model like I did with my time machine backup. I had to get my SSD replaced and haven't had the core audio problem since, but OS itsef is like 10-20 gb'ish.

 

There's a difference between the way manufacturers count storage and computers traditionally count storage.

128 GB - GB vs bytes - Google Search

There are no tweaks or adjustments. Your 128GB hard drive will have a capacity greater than or equal to the above figure. Mac OS X also has adopted the manufacturer counting method in the OS for consistency. Each file will end up taking slightly more reported space than it would on another operating system. There's no functional difference in the end, but it should alleviate your concern over consistency. That means your 92 GB folder would be reported as about 99 GB in OS X.

I don't think the macbook air 180 GB with the intent of selling of the 128 GB is a good idea. I think you should just get the 256 GB model. Buy a used model on eBay with an extended warranty if you need to save money.

You could also look into iTunes Match assuming you'll have a network connection most of the time, and don't have more than 25,000 songs.

 

I also don't think buying the 180GB SSD, installing it, and selling hte 128GB SSD is a good idea especially since 110GB (current 99GB+10GB) is going to be dedicated to an iTunes library (and who knows how much more that will expand over another year or two). In the end, 180GB won't take you that much further than the 128GB SSD already in the MBA by the time you add in the OS and 12GB for programs. That right there puts everything at around 142GB. Leave another 5GB for free space and the 180GB drive doesn't have much to spare.

Besides, that 180GB drive is $265. Combine that with the purchase of a mid-2011 13" 128GB MBA ($1250 at Best Buy) and you are only $50 shy of the cost of the 256GB 13" mid-2011 MBA. I just don't see the economics in doing something like that.

 

well, he wants to recoup the costs by selling the old one.

I think you would be lucky to get $100 from the original drive. Most likely less. That puts you at ~$175+ on top of a 128GB MBA. As korn said, 180GB most likely wouldn't be sufficient for you in after a while if you have a 110GB iTunes library to manage.

I would give iTunes match a second look. Or maybe google music if you don't have an iDevice and don't mind using a web browser to interact with your music.

 

Buy 13" 128GB SSD MBA, then pick up an Intel SSD, throw that in and sell the 128GB SSD. The ones in MBAs i was told are toshibas and are slow compared to even an Intel 320 series.

 

Please don't spread false information like that.

Apple uses proprietary SSDs, so you can't just replace it with an Intel.

Also, there are 2 types of SSDs in the Air, the Toshiba and the Samsung. Samsungs are noticeably faster.

 

but just noticeably. it's not a big deal if you get a toshiba drive. either way-

1. it should be faster than the low end intel drive
2. the OP can't use the aforementioned intel drive

 

They aren't really using proprietary SSDs as they fit within regulations. I believe the MBA uses an mSATA connection and they are user replaceable (though it might void Apple's warranty despite the end-user not having to do anything other than pop the old SSD out). You are right in that you just can't buy any old SSD and slap it in there but you can still buy upgrades (particularly from OWC). Your Toshiba vs Samsung comment has been talked about before and shown to be incorrect. Although the benchmarks for one point to it being better, actually noticing the difference in real world performance just isn't going to happen.

 

hey guys just checked in windows (NTFS) and my music is actually 75gb, I can do with out the podcasts, (which where taking up 20GB) so lets see:

120GB
-75GB
_____________
45GB

so minus 15GB FOR OS/Apps

30 GB

10GB FREE for best perfomance

10gb for downloads

leaves me with 10 GB to expand my iTunes collection, thats probaly more than engough for the amount of time Im going to keep it/ssd upgrade prices will get much lower in a year or so i think.

the 11" 128 air is 1150 on amazon
the 13" C2D old model w/256gb SSD is $1200

I want thunderbolt for external graphics coming in the future, the backlit keyboard is a big "meh" and I don't ever max out CPU maybe once a month. but its nice to have the xtra power. reason why i need itunes on the machine itself is many fold, but right now mainly because I need it backed up twice, and with current external hard drive prices Im not buying another one.

still deciding. the screen size is not really a factor in my decision. I also have the option of buying an old uni body white macbook off ebay and just waiting till summer...I am also worried that a major overall of the air's will destroy the resale vaule of the current gen.

 

thunderbolt external graphics is not something I would put much stock into. upgrading the SSD later is also not going to be cost effective.

 

Sent you a PM you might be interested in.

 

Best Buy is selling the 13" 128GB MBA for $1250 new (Amazon has it for $1235). You might as well spend the extra $100 (or $85 if you buy from Amazon) and get something with a much larger display that has a higher resolution. In my experience, people who buy the 11" MBA often end up regretting it due to the small display. It is still a powerful, portable machine but 11.6" really isn't a whole lot. 13.3" is much, much more manageable and comfortable enough to use all day.

 

why? isnt the MSI thingy due in Q2/3? I still am unclear if that needs a monitor. I would only use it for bootcamp, since gaming on OSX is rather pointless for me.

Looks like I am going for that 256GB old version from amazon, hope that extra year sitting on a shelf is not too bad for it.

 

You will almost certainly need an external monitor.

The reason you shouldn't hold out for the MSI external graphics adapter is that it hasn't been priced yet. It could easily end up being $250+ (that's without a graphics card or monitor) - and then it would enable you to run games at your desk, but you would still be limited to a dual core processor and however much memory you start out with. It would cost about $400 with the graphics card if it's priced at 250, and it could be priced even higher. You'd still need a monitor ($150+ for something decent)

Meanwhile, you could just get an entire small form factor desktop for about the same price, which would offer better performance, storage space, and the ability to upgrade components easily in the future.

Depends on the price, but these types of things are niche enough that they tend to be prohibitively expensive. That's why you shouldn't buy now expecting to rely on that in the future.

It most likely will take a 6770 max, which is better than what is in the macbook air, but isn't worth $400 to get running.

 

Why the 2010 model? You are willing to take that much of a hit in CPU performance simply for the storage capacity? What about Thunderbolt? You won't get that in the 2010 model. The 2011 MBA is above and beyond the 2010 model in almost every way, shape, and form. The external might be different but the Sandy Bridge setup really does add a lot more making the 2011 MBA perform more like a fully fledged notebook (and not just a notebook with a Core i3 processor) whereas the 2010 model relied on technology that was 4 years old and took a hit in performance.

 

Just get a 13" Macbook Pro. Cheaper, user replaceable drives, DVD, and more powerful. That's what I should have done *sigh*

 

Actually, the entry level MBP is on par with the 13" MBA in terms of computing power. Benchmarks put the two neck and neck. The Core i7 13" MBP pulls ahead when turbo boost but it will even pull ahead of the 15" MBP with a higher end quad-core Core i7 for some things. So the whole "one is more powerful" argument really isn't valid here since the mid-2011 MBA (particularly the model with the 1.7GHz Core i5) isn't going to have any noticeable slowdown vs a 13" MBP.

Also, technically speaking, the SSD in the MBA can be replaced by the end user. OWC provides upgrades and their prices aren't all that bad compared to standard 2.5" SSD drives. The lack of an optical drive does not dimish the MBA either if someone hardly ever uses it. I purchased a 13" MBP and used the optical drive about once every 2 months. So losing it wasn't a big deal at all. Others who still rely on optical storage formats would not even be looking at an Air anyway.

 

More or less, since the i7 in the Air can overclock itself, but still, at best it's a more expensive system that's less capable/user upgradeable.

No, it probably won't "feel" different versus the 13 (so long as you're getting 4GB) but that's not really a good selling point.

Also, technically speaking, the SSD in the MBA can be replaced by the end user. OWC provides upgrades and their prices aren't all that bad compared to standard 2.5" SSD drives. The lack of an optical drive does not dimish the MBA either if someone hardly ever uses it. I purchased a 13" MBP and used the optical drive about once every 2 months. So losing it wasn't a big deal at all. Others who still rely on optical storage formats would not even be looking at an Air anyway.[/QUOTE]

 

How is it less capable if it is "more or less" inline with the MBA? Granted, a 13" MBP with 8GB of RAM and the i7 CPU can outperform a MBA (and even a high end MBP) when the CPU is stressed and there are enough programs open to consume that much RAM. However, is the average user (or even power user) going to do that on a regular basis? Nope.

Also, if you equip an entry level 13" MBP with a 128GB SSD (whether its from Apple or not), the cost is going to be more than the entry level 13" MBA. So, if someone is not going to use the optical drive, there is absolutely nothing holding them to the MBP. You will get the same performance in a smaller package with a higher resolution display. The whole idea that a MBA can perform as well as a MBP and not feel any different is a strong selling point. It shows that an ultra portable can compete with a full fledged notebook and not be stuck somewhere between netbooks and notebooks (much like the 2008 and late 2010 MBAs).

 

*IF* you buy the fastest CPU on the Air, which means you're already spending more, then it's more or less the same as the cheapest 13" Pro. More or less because that's dependent on cooling too, to be able to overclock itself that much.

At BEST if you spend a lot more the Air can match the cheapest Pro. That's not a selling point.

Not sure what you mean by that exactly. The 15 and 17" Macbook Pros are better in every way save for price and being slightly larger, if you care about that.

If you want to get into "good enough" arguments, then an A4 or A6 in a $400 notebook is probably good enough too for most people most of the time. Doesn't mean faster won't be noticeable, or used by most people some of the time, and some people all of the time.

And at any rate, "it's almost as good as the cheapest Macbook Pro if you spend more on it" isn't a good defense for the Air.

About $100 more if you're adding a similar sized Intel SSD. That gets you a lot of extras though.

You'll get somewhat worse performance without the ability to upgrade RAM (and 4GB is already tight in 10.7) and a teeny, tiny size difference.

IMO this is a VERY bad trade off for the majority of users.

It's just as much stuck between them as ever. The only thing that's changed is Intel's lower wattage CPUs have gotten more powerful to a better "good enough" state, perhaps.

 

Since almost everything we use our computers for is limited by hard drive access time, I would have to overall disagree. I would get a macbook air rather than the 13" pro, all things considered.

If you want better computer performance, the best way to do it is make the hard drive faster. Notice that Intel is getting into hard drives. The reason that big tech companies like to keep your focus on processors and graphics cards is that they are making a ton of money doing it, those parts are all cheap to make (or buy). SSDs are really really expensive, and users do not have any interest in dropping storage space.

 

A Momentus XT is a great compromise on price/performance. Other than initial boot time (on Windows at least), there's little difference in the feel between that and an SSD. Really once the OS is up and running there's little difference regardless.

So throw an SSD in the MBP. You're still better off, and can use what you like, replace it when/if you need to, etc.

No. The CPU, GPU, and amount and speed of RAM makes a WAY bigger difference.

Yes, because they're a huge fab company and need things to keep their fabs busy.

 

But then it becomes the more expensive device. It's the reverse situation of your "cost is why you shouldn't buy the macbook air", and the point that was being made before.

I'm happy to just disagree rather than getting into a long winded academic argument. I'll also accept that you can contrive specific and not-entirely-uncommon cases where your view holds, but in general this is a misguided view, especially when taken as universal (or even average), because it is absolutely not. Bear in mind that I obviously agree that the CPU, GPU, and memory are all faster components than the hard drive. That's not the subject of discussion.

There aren't that many cases where you can avoid using the hard drive, and in essentially all of those cases, improving hard drive performance leads to greater overall performance per dollar cost than improving CPU/GPU/memory performance.

Video games are a common use case where the design of the application often enables one to avoid using the hard drive entirely (except during loading of the content, which can take a very long time). More commonly, operations on data are finished quickly enough that reading from or writing to the hard drive is either a short term inevitability, or you are waiting on the user (in which case none of the computer's components make a difference).

 

By maybe $100. And it's still the better device.

That's a SUPER fringe case anyway. IF you want exactly 120/128GB, and IF you don't need Ethernet, and IF you need an SSD, and IF you don't watch shows/movies...

THEN it's like $100 cheaper maybe, but still inferior. Mess with those variables a bit and it's inferior, and more expensive.

Entirely backwards. The contrived view is the above. Mess with any of those variables and the Macbook Pro is cheaper. And it's better regardless.

Once the OS is going it's not used that heavily, typically, except perhaps for video editing and the like. The bottleneck is the CPU/GPU/RAM, not the hard drive.

 

I could cite some academic reading material for you if you're interested in learning, but I'm not going to scrape through google for it.

 

Why would you need "academic reading material"?

Presumably you've got systems there with a fast mechanical drive, and an SSD, and can see for yourself. There's a HUGE difference in booting between a 7200RPM drive and Seagate's Momentus XT. Like the time is at least cut in half, maybe a third. No question that's real.

Less of a jump going to an SSD, though there is some.

But past that? Once you're in the OS? Makes no difference for any of my normal programs-they're close to instantaneous on either. Unless the system is RAM starved, it's caching things anyway. SSDs don't magically make things feel faster. If you're waiting on a program to respond or whatever, you're limited by the CPU/GPU as it's pegging out at 100%.

 

The problem is the initial access times. Caching in RAM doesn't help with this. The canonical operation is:

- begin
- load data (slow)
- operate on data (fast)
- write data (slow)
- end

This turns out to be the use case in more situations than you would expect. Of course, if you're just talking about videogames (or more generally programs which real time and interactive) this may not be the case. You might have:

- begin
- load data (slow)
- operate on data (fast)
- (much later) end

Computer developers generally jump through significant hoops to avoid using the hard drive at all in these types of applications, because it's such a slow device that relying on it in any way would break the interactive nature of the application. This also limits the domain of applicability to systems which are designed to operate for a long time (read: indefinitely) on a small set of data. This could be an acceptable design restraint for games in many cases, but it doesn't make any sense in the general case. (Some applications operate on larger data sets all at once, or more commonly, they may operate on smaller data sets intermittently over a wide potential range, where they may not know in advance which small portions of a large data set are relevant).

Obviously, you're thinking in terms of video games. You're using the CPU and GPU for that, and you're absolutely right.

I'm not talking about it any more. Hopefully this helps get the idea across.

 

It's pretty rare for any late generation CPUs to max out, short of encoding.

The weakest link in your PC is your storage drive, end of story.

 

This is pretty much only relevant when booting your PC, and largely eliminated when switching to an XT anyway.

I don't think I've even mentioned games. It's true for games, but even more true for Firefox and libreoffice and the like.

Actually it's very common. Any 10% increase in CPU power is said to be noticeable to the user. Look at how often a core gets maxed out just doing regular things. It'll be jumping up and down when doing something like browsing the web.

Ridiculous. Once things are loaded, the hard drive is practically irrelevant. Once I got here and turned on my PC, I could have a 5400RPM drive in there and it would have made virtually no difference at all to me all day.

 

Maybe it's different on a Mac (I just ordered my first MBP today) but on my Windows machine... I never hit above 20% for any core when doing daily activities.

Loading and using Visual Studio 2010 with Windows Server 8 Developer Preview running in the background on VMWare... 15% peak, avg 1%.

I sure hope my MBP isn't substantially worse.

EDIT:

BS. Every SSD I've installed for employees at my company have resulted in emails or comments about how fast their laptop is now. I've never, ever, received anything in the same ballpark of quantity of comments when upgrading RAM/Processor or overall model while keeping a HDD.

 

That's virtually impossible even on the fastest mobile chip.

Windows and OS X report this differently, which is what I'm guessing you're looking at. 20% in Windows on for example a Core 2 x2 would be one core running at around 50%. Far less on a quad, or with hyperthreading.

Yeah, you're almost certainly looking at the activity of one CPU there out of 4, 8, or more.

Should be similar, I think.

Too many variables to know the cause. Is this a fresh install? Clean install? How much RAM? How often is the system rebooted? What specifically are they referring to?

It just isn't a huge benefit once the OS is going for kind of "day to day" activities like office, Firefox and the like. Though would be if you were working with giant files. (Although if you were you might also want to worry about burning through an SSD.)

 

I'm looking at 8, quad core with HT. I see 8 graphs, not one. My CPU barely bumps doing anything in my day to day work as a Systems Admin.

When I'm testing 4-8 virtual machines, then it takes a bit of a hit. The bottleneck when I started doing that? HDD not CPU/RAM. Though I have a 2.2Ghz Core i7 Quad with 16GB RAM. When I went from a 7200RPM 500GB to a 256GB SSD with 128GB mSATA, huge jump in performance.

That is my work laptop - W520.

Similar results on my personal laptop - X220, but 2.7Ghz Dual Core with HT and 8GB memory. (See sig)

 

Firefox is generally getting all of it's data from the web rather than the hard drive. In this case, the limiting factor is the connection to the internet, which is the slowest component in that set of operations. A faster CPU/memory could render a web page faster. You might take the render time down from 1 ms to 1/2 ms for $300 worth of hardware. Meanwhile, if you increase the internet speed by 10%, you reduce the download time from 5 seconds to 4.5 seconds. There's a similar analogue to this type of problem with local computations.

You're actually wrong about libreoffice (and quite possible "the like", but it depends). Libreoffice is actually an OK example. The amount of computer time libreoffice spends waiting for the hard drive is vast compared to the amount of time libreoffice spends waiting on the CPU. Since libreoffice is expected to autosave your work in case of a crash or power failure or what have you, it has to keep writing to the hard drive as you make changes to your document. It can't save every change as you make it, because your hard drive has such a limited capacity for input and output operations that it would end up blocking hard drive access if any other application needed it. Meanwhile, it's taking up very little CPU time and memory, and getting a faster CPU or faster/more memory would give you no benefit.

Your CPU, when given a task, will work as hard as it can to complete the task as quickly as possible, and then return to rest. This is expected. Otherwise, your would be wasting time (it could have finished faster). Even small operations should max out the CPU, it should try to maxed out for a very short period of time. This uses resources most effectively. If you increase the performance of this stage, you might improve from .5 ms to .4 ms with a 20% CPU increase. It doesn't change the fact that if any data needs to be read or written, it could take 10 ms just to get the hard drive head set up at the starting position.[/QUOTE]

Indeed, if you're willing to ignore all cases where the computer has to wait because data is being loaded from or written to the hard drive, then those time periods are not relevant. The problem is that this occurs with much higher frequency than you would expect. This is why people benchmark hard drives. Of course, games have to be designed specifically to not use the hard drive, so gamers use a separate set of benchmarks.

 

SSDs don't help with PERFORMANCE at all. They just load stuff faster. Once it's in RAM, it's irrelevant...which mostly means once the system's finished booting it's irrelevant.

Don't know what you're looking at, but without doing much of anything special here I'm bouncing between 20-95% of one of my cores right now as I opened it to look at it.

 

Not entirely. It's still faster on a faster CPU. There's a noticeable difference between a Penryn and a Sandy Bridge, for example, and a HUGE difference between those and the little c50 I use as a kitchen computer.

Yikes. Not even close. Even on a modern CPU there are times it's going to take noticeable time to render a page. Let alone on a slower one.

No it isn't. It's not really using the drive at all save for opening/closing documents.

Yes, and it's completely irrelevant whether you have an SSD or a 5400RPM drive in doing so, with common files at least.

 

They certainly do. If you think once the OS is loaded your disk activity is done, you really don't know how your OS works. Unless things are very different between Windows and Mac, the hard drive is nearly always active. RAM caching helps but not everything is cached in RAM.

Each program you run is going to be accessing small amounts of data on the drive. With a HDD, small data reads are the worst due to access times. That is why SSDs offer a huge performance boost, all those small reads and writes are completed with very very small access times now.

Your CPU spends most of its time sleeping.

Again, this is coming from Windows experience.

 

Who says? Even under OS X, the CPU jumps between less than 1% and ~12% for general web browsing. No noticeable hiccup in performance at all. Even a complex maco in MATLAB peaks my CPU at about 30% (just one core) and again, no performance issues with other background programs.

I can think of many instances where having an SSD will provide more performance over an HDD, particularly with programs that are constantly loading data. Although you are correct in saying that an SSD and HDD will perform the same once a file is loaded, that is often not how programs work. They are constantly loading smaller program files. Even something as simple as MS Word 2011 can be slowed down on an HDD compared to SSD. Changing the font, importing pictures, importing templates, etc. will all cause the computer to load additional program files.

So I don't understand how that is a valid argument especially since day-to-day tasks aren't even run like that.

 

Also, if you check out the Lenovo forums, the only reason anyone suggests an i5 over an i3 are the features the i5 brings (AES, vPro, etc) and not the processor speed which most say is only noticeable when running benchmarks. Same for i5 to i7 - i7 only brings USB3 in some Lenovo models, otherwise its a waste of money. (These are all based on the 2 core models, not the 4 core)

 

Did I ever say that?

Yes, just like the CPU...only more so.

You can't talk about the CPU spending lots of time idle, and then claim the hard drive is under this huge load. The entire time I've been writing this, the highest transfer rate my hard drive's used is 100KB/s, while one of my CPUs has nearly maxed out repeatedly.

No, but most stuff is, which is why it mostly doesn't matter under a normal work load once the OS is up.

Even if they do, so what? It's well within the capabilities of even a 5400RPM drive once you've got everything running.

Which matters...at boot time. Makes ZERO difference to performance right now, and since 8am this morning.

 

Well it certainly goes higher on my Macbook Air.

So Sandy Bridge feels faster than Penryn because...?

Then presumably it executes instantaneously? I have all kind of jobs that takes minutes to run, and it's not super uncommon for my web browser to peg out the CPU while it's doing a script heavy page either.

ONLY with programs that are constantly loading data, and then ONLY when the CPU/GPU can do something with that data faster than the drive can provide it. Copying huge video files it would make a difference, for example. I presume opening large image files throughout the day probably.

Great. So casual users who care about price are happy with an i3. Is this a surprise? They were also happy running Windows XP when Vista or 7 were out, are happy running with 1 or 2 GB of RAM, and have 400,000 weird startup programs.

Power users would prefer a faster CPU and GPU and more RAM-always, just as they use 7200RPM drives and SSDs in place of 5400RPM drives. I really don't care that some casual, clueless user is happy running their ill configured PC with outdated software on a low end CPU.

 

No matter how many posts you dissect and declare wrong, it doesn't change the fact that increasing your hard drive performance will improve system performance dramatically compared to adding CPU power at the same cost.

 

Pretty much, and you repeat it again in the same post:

Look, when you run anything on your PC it is accessing small files. EVER AFTER YOU BOOT! And that is where the bottleneck is for the majority of the time. Small files are slow to load on HDDs and that is the biggest plus of an SSD - they're much faster to load.

Yes, a 5400RPM or any drive can load small files. However, they don't load them quickly which is the entire problem we're speaking of.

Compare an SSD 4k read/write speed:
Micron RealSSD C300 256GB SATA 6Gbps SSD Review - CrystalDiskMark v3.0 - Legit Reviews

To a HDD:
WD Scorpio Black 750GB Notebook Hard Drive Review - CrystalDiskMark v3.0.1 - Legit Reviews

See the difference?


EDIT:

You do know that a MBA uses an ULV processor right? You are correct that there is a jump from a ULV to a full voltage processor like the i3/i5/i7. That's why slim laptops are slower than larger laptops, they use completely different processor lines. However, HDD->SSD is a larger performance jump than ULV->Full voltage.

 

Strawman. I never said such a thing.

yes, and as I said, and as you can EASILY verify for yourself, the speed it's doing that at is WELL below what a 7200RPM drive can handle, or presumably a 5400RPM drive.

On the other hand, my entire CPU just shot to 100% while opening this thread in another tab to respond to it.

You can EASILY verify this for yourself.

Quick enough. Which again, you can see for yourself. Well, presumably. A 7200RPM drive certainly can.

I already know the difference, I'm saying it's irrelevant in this context.

Huh? Not sure what your point is with the first part, but with the second, it depends entirely on what you're doing, and what you're measuring.

 

in general, your method of thinking about this problem relies on a design in which it is possible to preload all data into memory and where the operations required on that small data set are very large or infinite, or indefinite.

this design is possible in a relatively small subset of program types. programs in a modern operating system environment are designed to run concurrently with other programs. that means that each program, ideally, loads as little data into memory as is possible, so that other applications with unknown memory requirements can run concurrently without problems. games are a particular counterexample, in that they tend to have large memory requirements and the expectation is that they will substantively be the only running program, so they will preload as much data as is reasonable, and be designed from the ground to get by with however much data can reasonably be preloaded. This involves short cuts and approximations, and accepting the change in expected behaviour. but most programs are not games, and don't fit that model. many applications can't trade accuracy for data size. other applications need to rely on permanent storage for data persistence as execution occurs to maintain state in the event of a crash or power failure. there can be many applications with these types of requirements running at the same time.

I'm really done now.

 

If this is your response, I think we're done here then.

 

This is exactly what happens in real life. With normal web browsing, office work, etc., there's very little demand on the hard drive. It's mostly below the threshold where the hard drive is a bottleneck.

They do, and for the second time I'll question why you keep mentioning games. Games aren't as good an example as general office usage, and I never mentioned them.

Bizarre. You made up something you wished I had said, then claimed I said it again, without bothering to actually, I don't know, at least quote me, and now you're "done". Great. I don't think putting words in other people's mouths is a great way to communicate, but okay...