1330 with SSD is it worth it?

Hi,

I'm definetly getting the 1330 and I am lusting after the SSD, It would be perfect for what I do with my laptop. but it is eye wateringly expensive £460 (im a brit) extra. I can just about stretch to afford it but is it worth it? how easy is upgrading to a SSD at a later date?

Any advice appreciated

 

Well 460 pounds is close to 900$... which is a lot in my opinion. Just get a fast 7200 rpm hard drive, I think you should be ok with that.

 

DITTO.... yeah save the money

 

Speed is obviously a benefit but I'm thinking about the SSD more because of battery life, weight and because I am clumsy so chances are it will be dropped quite soon after me getting it. Size isn't an issue, 32GB is plenty for what I do with my laptop away from home.

how much of a difference will an SSD make in regards to these factors

 

It's very easy to upgrade hard drives on laptops and SSD drives are no different. I do think that it is a bit difficult to justify the expense right now. SSD's have a very long lifetime so you could carry it over to your next laptop in the future. The downside to that is that it is only 32gb of space and 32gb in 2-3 years will be even more cramped than it is today.

If you're comfortable with upgrading parts it is almost always cheaper to buy upgrades seperate from the laptop purchase. RAM is cheaper from online retailers and the 32gb SSD's are slightly cheaper as well. Last I looked the 32gb Samsung SSD was 70 or 80 usd cheaper than what Dell was charging for it.

If you see yourself getting this SSD now and using it for 3 or more years (in one or more laptops) then the price you're paying for is easier to justify. If you see yourself moving to a newer/bigger drive within 3 years then I think that it's very difficult to justify the drive at that price.

I would also guess that while SSD prices will come down in the next six months we're still a year or so away from 'affordable' SSD solutions. If you want a SSD by the end of 2007 then I would expect you will have to pay a hefty premium for it. There just are not enough manufacturers with SSD's in retail channels right now to bring prices down. SSD's are not an upgrade in all aspects to traditional spinning disc drives which means that the market is going to be fairly small. It would surprise me if the 32gb SSD's went as low as $300 by the end of 2007.

Battery life and weight are definite pluses. SSD's are significantly more resistant to physical forces (being dropped) than traditional drives. That said I would be hesitant to recommend or describe any hard drive as being 'safe to drop.' Is the SSD an improvement over traditional drives in this regard? Yes. Will it survive being dropped 3 feet onto a hard floor? I'm less sure about that.

 

It is a lot of money for such a small size though. if you need the size then get the 7200 rpm. They main thing it is built for is stability since you don't have to worry about hard crashes and any spinning parts. weigh the cons and pros for what you need it for. If you drop your computer a lot, I would look into the complete care more then the drive and just make regular backups.

 

Thanks for the advice.

I've miscalculated the price its actually £280 more than the 7200 drive, I'll be buying it for work so I will eventually get 40% of the total price back which drops the cost down to about £140 extra.

What about now?

 

Is no one going to reply

 

Still way too much. Whatever gain you get from having a solid-state drive is easily offset by the huge increase in price and limited space.

 

For me, 32 gb is not very much if you have vista.... I could fill that up in an hour. throw a couple games on and some apps and it is gone. not a good choice for me but if you don't need the space then the security is what you need to look at. Is it worth the extra money to get a drive that wont fail. I personally have never had a HDD fail on my systems but I took about 3 calls a day at Dell of bad HDD's. So it depends on what you need/want.

 

Still no answer on battery life. I am also very much lusting after SSD and would jump on board the minute they would sell a 64GB option or would just leave out that damn vista OS. How can you even think of trying to sell 32GB with Vista????

That aside. I have seen that battery life with a 8400 is about 2h and 23 m. This when viewing DVD with a 6 cell battery. What does this mean for normal use (internet, word). What does this mean for gaming?

How much longer would the X3100 last me and what would I gain by using SSD?

Anybody?

 

just a thought- 64GB ssd will be available by the end of the year.

 

As far as battery life. The HDD is a small part of the battery drain. I am sure you will see a slight difference but not that much. Gaming is the most taxing on the batter since you usually run the backlight on high, accessing the cd rom in most cases, accessing the HDD, using cpu at a high level... I would expect battery life to be low if you are gaming all the time. I hope that answers part of your questions.

 

I would get it if this were XP, Vista will hog up a lot of your space... might still be worth it.

 

Toshiba and some other manufactures are starting to use the 64gb SSD now. I ordered m1330 with SSD but I have a potable hard drive which I store movies on. Im sure that you wont have to wait till the end of the year for the 64gb option.

Why not get the 200gb for now. Then in a year or at the end of this one remove it turn it an external portable drive and pop a larger 64gb SSD drive in. I think that its possible to go from HDD to SDD but if someone would clarify that it would be great.

At then of the day its expensive but if that not an issue then I say go for it. Its always nicer to have a newer technology regardless.

 

Thanks for the advice,

I've gone with the 120GB hard drive but plan to get a larger SSD and install it myself when they aren't so extortionate.

 

The Sandisk SSD's have the same interface as standard HDD's and are designed to be swappable with regular drives. Sandisk is what Dell users I believe.

 

Gaming would give you a bit less, 2 hours, I'd say.. But the difference wouldn't be much, esp. since you are going with integrated.. And don't expect the X3100 to game at anything over low settings. Regular, non taxing usage-3 hours... more likely 3 and a half or a bit more.

A SSD would give you at most 15 mnutes extra.. It isn't that much more efficient that a regular HDD. The major gain would be speed.

 

Don't plan on taking the computer through the airport and not expect the drive to get wiped. A little flaw that is not very publicized.

 

I doubt it.. there's enough metal around the drive to shield it from electromagnetic fields... The aluminium casing, for one...

 

Here's a review of it. (link)