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MacBook Air face-off: HDD vs SSD (with video)

appleinsider.com — In this fourth installment of our MacBook Air review series, we pit Apple's standard hard disk drive (HDD) model against the standard solid state drive (SSD) configuration in a set of battery and benchmark tests to gauge the performance and power saving capabilities of each. Videos are used to demonstrate a side-by-side simultaneous boot...

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  • mesketch, on 02/11/2008, -7/+46the application launch is pretty impressive.
    • thcobbs, on 02/11/2008, -11/+5What are you expecting from a SOLID STATE DRIVE that doesn't require a seek? All you have to do is tell the processor where its next instruction is.
      • pyrates, on 02/11/2008, -4/+4That is exactly right. The delay of the app launching is always the hard drive it is on. And since SSD has no seek, no delay. This article smells of duh.
      • sirmasterboy, on 02/12/2008, -2/+2If you used Vista, you would have this nice thing called Superfetch, where after a few weeks it learns what programs you use frequently and at what time you use them. It then pre-loads them in memory so they are ready to open immediately. It takes me about 10 seconds to fully load photoshop on XP, where in Vista with Superfetch it's almost instant.
        • thcobbs, on 02/13/2008, -0/+1No, that's called a memory leak. And its one of the main reasons vista is a memory hog.
    • dagamer34, on 02/11/2008, -1/+7However, the caching is even more impressive. Thing is, how often do you HAVE to boot a Mac? I can go days on end without needing to do so (and probably weeks if it weren't for updates).
      • VeganG, on 02/12/2008, -4/+2So can XP. That argument isn't quite relevant these days.
    • ICanRead, on 02/11/2008, -2/+9I like Mac's for their software.
      The hardware is nothing impressive.

      Buy up those SSD's Mac fans and help bring the prices downa nd quality up.
      I will meet you around Gen 2 or 3. I'll probably end up with one of those drives in my Centrino one day.
      • Escamotage, on 02/12/2008, -2/+1Yeah. Rely on the Mac users for progress. That sounds about right.
    • MacSuxWindozSux, on 02/11/2008, -0/+2Drive Deframentation is almost obsolete.
      Still can eat some space up at the end of clusters, but no performance deterioration.
  • neiltc13, on 02/11/2008, -24/+10In other words, NO, the SSD is NOT worth your money!
    • zhepp, on 02/11/2008, -4/+11actually it was showing how big of difference it made, I'm glad you watched the videos.
      • jabberwolf, on 02/12/2008, -2/+2Actually the video shows booting up as a difference only.

        You see not all are mactards, and actually READ and not just look at the pretty colors! Most tests show that that most regular drives write much faster which is needed for most computer operations. The SSD drives are great for reading data and power use, which allow it to boot much faster and lengthen notbook use. For performance the regular drives are still better, and the 7200 RPM drives are dramatically better. That's why a hybrid drive would probably work best to store the OS and Apps but use a regular drive to store all the caching directories.
  • osage, on 02/11/2008, -10/+8hellyeah - i want the SSD
    • fluxion, on 02/11/2008, -0/+5cant wait to stick an SSD in my thinkpad when the price come down
      • sadilak, on 02/12/2008, -0/+2Can you do that? I mean replace the HDD with an SSD the same way one swaps a HDD drive?
        • eeevildictator, on 02/12/2008, -0/+4They are both ATA so I suppose.
    • icebreaker89, on 02/14/2008, -0/+1want to pay way to much money for a small advantage? most programs don`t even use the quick access times. For that kind of many i`d rather buy myself another notebook
  • Georgy, on 02/11/2008, -6/+10Well looks in the real world the ssd is faster, unlike wat those graphs showed us in previous tests
    Im gonna wait till ssd becomes cheaper and grab one of these babies.....
    • FredFredrickson, on 02/11/2008, -5/+8SSD can only write a limited number of times before it stops holding data reliably. It's also slow and expensive. This technology is useless for a computer in it's current state.
      • LR2_, on 02/11/2008, -0/+2With wear-leveling this isn't really that big of a problem. Here is an example for the life time of a SSD explained in detail: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ssd_write_limit

        Also, here is a quote from wikipedia: "Limited write cycles – typical Flash storage will typically wear out after 300,000-500,000 write cycles, while high endurance Flash storage is often marketed with endurance of 1–5 million write cycles (many log files, file allocation tables, and other commonly used parts of the file system exceed this over the lifetime of a computer). Special file systems or firmware designs can mitigate this problem by spreading writes over the entire device (so-called wear levelling), rather than rewriting files in place." See Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_levelling
        • trylleklovn, on 02/11/2008, -2/+4So basicly fragmenting is now a good thing :)?
      • thcobbs, on 02/11/2008, -1/+31.) Depends on the type of memory used... That is mostly true for thumb drives, but true SSD hard drives may surprise you.
        2.) There is DEFINITELY a hardware abstraction layer that keeps un-needed data from being written to the hard drive like is usually done in VM applications. Effectively, this keeps stuff in an ram-based buffer until you're sure you want to commit it to disk. At which point, the data is transferred to permanent storage.
        3.) Its still DAMN fast. and if you're smart, you'll use this as a remote device and store most of your stuff on a networked drive.
      • grantmoore3d, on 02/12/2008, -0/+2If you're smart, you'd use this drive to hold your OS and applications and keep your data on a separate drive, therefore reducing the number of times you have to write to it.
    • dagamer34, on 02/11/2008, -0/+3Your current magnetic based hard drive is more likely to fail before an SSD does. Plus, you'll also notice the wear-leveling due to the decreased space you will have. Fully written blocks aren't used.

      Besides, with the pace of flash prices dropping, you're more likely to upgrade it (or the computer itself) before having it break on you.
  • homer4199, on 02/11/2008, -26/+6Is the air able to run applications like photo shop? or play intense games?

    No, so why is it worth it to pay an extra 1000 bucks for something you DON'T NEED!! Hay look guys you can get WOW, Aperture 1.5 preinstalled on your air for only 300 BUCKS!!

    Here is an idea, everyone that is going to buy one of these instead go buy a 600 buck laptop over at newegg, plug in the ac adapter, take a bath and ***** drop it in the tube with you. God damn dumb *****!
    • Balanced, on 02/11/2008, -4/+3Why do you "need" a $600 laptop? Any computer? Why not just use a stick and a wax tablet?

      Because good tools make people more productive. Some people think this is a better tool for them... I don't think it is for me, and I'm happy with my macBook, but again, that's me.
    • pirloui, on 02/11/2008, -8/+1photo shop ?
      intense games ?
      Dumb *****.
      • Midnitte, on 02/11/2008, -5/+4Other then photoshop I dont think any mac can play crysis. :x
        Again, your paying for the Apple brand and thinness/weight of the air, not its abilities.
        • krische, on 02/11/2008, -4/+2Other than photoshop, I don't think most PCs can play crysis. Except the ones that cost like 2 grand. (as much as a mac pro)
          • LoudMusic, on 02/11/2008, -3/+8That would be a really low end Mac Pro. And the cheapest they can purchased new is $2,300. And $2,000 for a gaming "PC" would build a pretty great gaming rig.

            You are teh l0z3r.
          • Midnitte, on 02/11/2008, -5/+0Was using crysis as an "intense game" exaderation. Shall I say Bioshock instead?
          • krische, on 02/11/2008, -1/+6Considering that the Mac Pro comes with the Quad Core processor which is about 700 bucks, an equivalent PC isn't going to be much cheaper.

            and grow up. calling someone 'teh l0z3r' just makes you look like an idiot.
          • LoudMusic, on 02/11/2008, -3/+4A Dell XPS 720 with a Quad core and 3GB of memory standard (50% more than a Mac Pro) costs $1,500. That's $800, or over 30%, cheaper than the Mac.

            You are teh double l0z3r! I am so sad for you. Perhaps you should stop being stupid.
          • pirloui, on 02/11/2008, -0/+3LoudMusic is so stupid, cause he don't know there is quand core and quad core. How dumb of him, the l0z3rz!
          • krische, on 02/11/2008, -1/+4I like how that Dell XPS has the Core 2 Q6600 Quad-core, whereas the Mac has the Quad-core Xeon. A nice price difference of oh say, 500 dollars.
      • pirloui, on 02/11/2008, -2/+2Yes, in this case the emphasis is on thinness.
        It's not a computer for gamers. So that argument is nothing.
        Besides the first poster insulted me, and writes photo shop like a dumb ***** who knows *****.
    • chris1012, on 02/11/2008, -1/+5if you are married and/or have kids, please tell them that it's best if they find a new place to live before you go out on an angry rampage and ax murder them all. Thanks.

      SSD FTW, great videos. I'd like to see this done with Vista.
    • vault, on 02/12/2008, -0/+2You need some anger management classes, homer.
  • MnmlMn, on 02/11/2008, -4/+14The videos were great! I didn't need to look at any benchmarks after watching them!
    • TheUngod, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1Who needs actual numbers when you have purdy pitures!
  • FredFredrickson, on 02/11/2008, -15/+9Ars has already told us that neither the Mac Air or the Mac Air with SSD are "worth it," so honestly, what's the point?
    • node3, on 02/11/2008, -2/+6The Digg comments for that story don't reflect that. It was mostly people thinking SSD *wasn't* worth it. Now, we have incontrovertible evidence that SSD is better than HDD ($1,000 more? That's up to you, but it's definitely, noticeably, faster).

      Don't worry though, this story will see a lot of posts supporting SSD getting dugg down. It's part of the standard Apple-story cycle. We're just now leaving the "it costs too much and doesn't have some feature X that I don't really need in practice, I just need it on the specs list" phase.
  • naterpoke, on 02/11/2008, -11/+2ah yes 7 comments and its already down, MAC QUALITY!!!
    • GvnMcCld, on 02/11/2008, -0/+6What does the number of comments have to do with anything?
    • jw1223, on 02/11/2008, -1/+6Actually, they host on linux. But thanks for playing.
  • cthellis, on 02/11/2008, -4/+1Nice to see someone examine things more closely, rather than toss a random "it should help with battery life" comment and then mention the price five times.

    Hope they'll re-examine the battery life comparisons again later, when they get equally-specced, equally-aged systems.
  • FoxFaction, on 02/11/2008, -2/+7I got an SSD in my Dell M1330. Unfortunately, it has some issues with the piezoelectric effects in the processor capacitors that make a really high-pitched squeal, so I can't really enjoy the quietness. Moral of the story, don't buy an m1330. :)
    • pathy, on 02/11/2008, -3/+7M1330 > Air
    • krische, on 02/11/2008, -0/+10I think that is just the siren telling you your computer is going really fast!
  • FoxFaction, on 02/11/2008, -0/+13I look forward to the day we can look backward and laugh at platter-based storage methods.
  • Richandler, on 02/11/2008, -1/+40It maybe faster, but the SSD is still not worth its weight in gold.
  • koopo, on 02/11/2008, -8/+280 diggs and feels like I'm again surfing on a 28.8k again.

    Mirror anyone?
  • wageslaven, on 02/11/2008, -11/+3Wow, what an insightful article. A comparison between a mac air and a mac air w/ssd.

    You know there have been SSD drive in laptops for a while now...

    And, there are smaller, better featured, lighter laptops in the market for less money...

    So Digg, what kind of circle-jerk "face-off" is this?
    • krische, on 02/11/2008, -0/+6So wait? It's a bad idea to compare two laptops, with the exact same config except the hard drives, to test the hard drive speed?

      So wageslaven, what kind of circle-jerk "blind hate for macs" is this?
  • FoxFaction, on 02/11/2008, -5/+7This is a really useful comparison of SSD vs HDD. Thanks for the video!
    • pirloui, on 02/11/2008, -0/+3I don't get why you comment is getting buried..
  • cabooglio2, on 02/11/2008, -17/+58I got a Mac for my grandma and she called me a fag.
    • tapeworm77, on 02/11/2008, -5/+29But she always does that doesn't she?
      • cabooglio2, on 02/11/2008, -10/+4Only on mac-related issues, you latte-sucking yuppie.
        • pirloui, on 02/11/2008, -0/+7Redneck.
        • cabooglio2, on 02/11/2008, -12/+3If, by "redneck" you mean that I love America, hate Macs and beat up pansies, then yes, I am a redneck... and proud of it.
        • ShinRaTDR, on 02/11/2008, -1/+15ruined the joke by continuing to talk.
        • cabooglio2, on 02/11/2008, -10/+1If only I were kidding, pansy.
      • jabberwolf, on 02/12/2008, -6/+4I agree with the latte drinking but it's more "wanna be" yuppie for Apple users.
        I mean macs are rarely used for anything than internet browsing and email. They are touted for being able to run photoshop and a few other programs faster but real power users use PCs and rendering farms with linux not to mention many 3rd party programs that are only available to PCs in 64 bit and not for OSX. Most Mac users will argue they use it professionally, but its laughable because most don't. They only "wanna be" professional. The sad truth, they are not.
        • chalkboy, on 02/12/2008, -5/+3Truest statement ever!
        • aussieNickuss, on 02/12/2008, -0/+2If you work in the design field, then you are deemed un-professional or amateurish if you use a PC.
        • Escamotage, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1Don't stereotype. Aside from gaming, Mac users can do pretty much anything a PC user can. You'd be surprised at how many third-party freeware apps there are for macs.
      • yohnkrb, on 02/12/2008, -0/+3I work IT and I use a Macbook Pro. And since it's my profession, I would say I'm a professional. My guess is you've never used a Mac for more than 10 mins in your life. You just don't like the people. But if you make comments like that in real life, I can see why. They probably don't like you either.

        BTW; Boot Camp, Parallels, VMWare Fusion? Power users usually know about virtualization and dual booting.
      • yohnkrb, on 02/12/2008, -0/+3Sorry, that hate was meant for jabberwolf..
    • vanza001, on 02/12/2008, -0/+3lol. Are you a fag?
  • freeport7, on 02/11/2008, -2/+5I checked out the Air for the first time at an Apple store this weekend. Yes, it's thin and cool. But, it really didn't seem to be all that much lighter than a regular Macbook. What am I missing here, that someone would want to pay the extra cash for?
    • cthellis, on 02/11/2008, -3/+3Some people want the extra portability.
      • jabberwolf, on 02/12/2008, -1/+2Great its portable but the battery life sucks and the performance sucks. Oh and you have to being along an external CD/DVD player and etra doggles to connect. I think one review said it best that the Airbook was an excellent "internet device". Meaning, it's not a good substitute for the real laptops out there.
    • chingy1788, on 02/11/2008, -1/+6thats exactly what i was thinking
      its lighter, but at 3, 4 pounds you wont notice much
      its thinner
      but it lacks an optical drive, has a internal battery, 1 usb, no firewire, ethernet etc

      being thin, i reckon this is more of a technical achievement than something practical, much like the bugatti veyron, it goes fast but you cant really use it everyday with that 4MPG rating and you cant go 253mph on regular roads either
      • krische, on 02/11/2008, -0/+3Granted I see no need for it either, its supposed to be the laptop for people "on-the-go." Being on the go usually means you don't plug much into it, so they scratched out alot of the ports common to laptops.
    • pyrates, on 02/11/2008, -2/+8It's jewelry. That's all it is.
  • cbergstrom, on 02/11/2008, -11/+4I'm sure I'll get dugg down for this but....

    My main PC boots from from initial button press of power to everything fully loaded in 14 seconds. Of course, I'm running dual raptors for boot and it's a 3.2 quad with 4 megs of memory..

    Course, XP isn't as pretty as OSX.
    • freeport7, on 02/11/2008, -2/+17Wow .... only 4 MB of memory and it boots in 14 seconds? Please build a rig for me.
      • zhepp, on 02/11/2008, -1/+1nice call on catching that :D
      • cthellis, on 02/11/2008, -2/+2Silly freeport7... He meant megaGIGS of memory!
      • cbergstrom, on 02/12/2008, -1/+0Meep! Gigs! 4 Gigs!

        Wow, terrible of me.
    • MillenniumGuy, on 02/11/2008, -1/+2He may be referring to 4 megs of cache memory on the quad core proc.
      • dagamer34, on 02/11/2008, -0/+3I was pretty sure quad core chips have 6-8MB of cache.
    • pirloui, on 02/11/2008, -0/+1Good for you, but that's like saying you car toasts a bike.
    • greenlight2001, on 02/11/2008, -0/+2Dude, your epenis is still small... as is your real one. Quit trying to compensate.
    • altosaxon, on 02/11/2008, -1/+1You're darn right it is prettier!
  • KentDiego, on 02/11/2008, -1/+14Wow, 18 seconds faster boot. A bit pricey for what you get there. I did not see any battery tests anywhere. battery life would be much more interesting.
    • LoudMusic, on 02/11/2008, -0/+4That's exactly what I was thinking. Surely it's less power hungry. But I haven't heard anyone talk about that yet.

      The speed boost is nice, but you could get that much of a boot time reduction if Apple would just streamline the boot process. Most people I know leave their computers on all the time anyway - as soon as they open the lid the computer "wakes up" and in less than 5 seconds they're using it.
      • bjornski, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1That's one of the cool things I like about this SSD thing. You'll be able to drop your computer into "sleep" mode and carry it around powered-on without worrying about bumping around any platter based storage.

        For $1000 savings, I'll shut down my machine to move it. But in the future? This is gonna be sweet.
    • hack4good, on 02/12/2008, -0/+3There are two pages to the review.
    • mrASSMAN, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/11/macb ...
  • amawg9, on 02/11/2008, -8/+4I just ordered one, not the SSD, can't wait.
    • jer2eydevil88, on 02/12/2008, -4/+2Why?
      • amawg9, on 02/12/2008, -0/+2Because I want a small notebook that I can carry with me at school. Why not? I don't play computer games, I don't, edit video. What will I be missing out on?
  • webkidd, on 02/11/2008, -2/+9The videos of the launch times make it worth the money alone. I often open 3 to 5 apps at the same time and I always want to kill my self when that cause the computer to choke.
    • PayneX, on 02/12/2008, -1/+4Seek help.
    • yohnkrb, on 02/12/2008, -0/+0True. I have 6 programs launch on startup. I'd like to see the comparison with that involved.
  • mal1964, on 02/11/2008, -9/+4Apple always wins on digg.
    • pirloui, on 02/11/2008, -1/+4Anything Apple get's insulted like ***** you mean.
      • jabberwolf, on 02/12/2008, -2/+2Nope , simply made fun of because Apple fans always think they are the first. So you may call it an insult, it's simply a reality check. Too bad if you can't take facts.
        • pirloui, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1I don't think anyone has said the MBA was the first laptop with SSD.. (BTW)
    • pirloui, on 02/11/2008, -0/+2BTW, if you noticed, this isn't about apple winning anything, it's about SSD vs HDD.
      So let's calm down on the hatred, it makes you blind.
    • mal1964, on 02/11/2008, -1/+1I am calm and I'm not hating anything, It was just a stereotype joke. I was saying, "why read it." I get upset with bigots sometimes, but never ever over a computer.
      • pirloui, on 02/12/2008, -0/+2Bows. Sorry for dry tone, the hatefest just tears on me.
  • intrepidDesign, on 02/11/2008, -0/+9yeah its fast, but not worth the money. im going to wait for generation 2 SSD's and their lower price.
    • jer2eydevil88, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1I will wait till there are 150gb SSD drives for around $300 before i consider getting one. Without that much space for that kind of price its just not worth it for me.
  • kermithefrogand, on 02/11/2008, -7/+4fanboys cannot get enough of this *****
    • altosaxon, on 02/12/2008, -1/+4I thought, maybe you were just in a bad mood when you decided to write this comment. The comparison is informative and answers a few questions many may have had about SSDs. However, upon further examination it appears that your mother didn't love you nearly enough when you were a child. Diggers, look at these comments and be amazed at how stupid and truly useless they are. I was surprised... http://digg.com/users/kermithefrogand/history/comm ...
  • dagamer34, on 02/11/2008, -0/+3Probably the only reason the SSD option exists is to create demand to drop the price down. I expect the product to be killed when you can have SSD in a MacBook Pro for $400 more.
  • Reno582, on 02/11/2008, -0/+1Who the hell uses 8GBs for swap when the air only has 2GBs of RAM, I usually go by the old 1.5x the amount of ram method which would be only 3072MB for the swap file.
  • Jeezoflip, on 02/11/2008, -2/+8sorry but $1300 more for the solid state is not worth 18 seconds faster to me.
  • HydrogenOxide, on 02/11/2008, -5/+6I don't get why everyone is hating on the Air. Sure, it's kind of slow, sure, it's not that big, but the target consumer, the family member with not alot of stuff, isn't going to play crysis or compile webkits or render with C4D. Sure it's pricy, but so is every other Apple product.
  • carterx, on 02/11/2008, -0/+2lets put this badboy in it http://gizmodo.com/352839/16tb-ssd-is-largest-flas ... a slight increase to 1.6TB
    As a cost is not posted, I like one users pay scale.... will cost a lot of bananas
  • grantmoore3d, on 02/11/2008, -0/+2I've been saying SSD will replace HDD as the primary OS/application drive for years now! Finally, I can rub it in my friends' non-believing faces, mwwwhahahahahaaa
    However, I hope the size increase for the SSDs will catch up in the next few years without a significant cost increase.
    • Zephik, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1Gizmodo has an article, one post above you actually, about a 1.6TB SSD. Cost increase is unavoidable at the moment, but we're already at 1.6TB! That was FAST. So I'm only guessing that the market for this product is going to explode here sometime soon. When that happens, its going to be good news all around. Five years? Try within the next year, two at most.
  • MaXPL, on 02/12/2008, -5/+2wow thats so impressive. i think you i'll go pay the additional $999 so my computer loads 18 seconds faster. idiots.
  • barl0w, on 02/12/2008, -1/+1My bastard of a bro-in-law got one for Valentine's Day yesterday: http://flickr.com/photos/barl0w/
    I had to invite myself over during the opening of it to take photos =)
    • londonroad, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1Valentine's day is on Thursday. Today is tuesday.
  • jabberwolf, on 02/12/2008, -5/+3Great vid. but burried because this has nothing to do with the Mac Air !
    The solid state drives have been out for awhile now, Apple is not the first nor the innovator for this!
    I'll probably get burried for telling this obvious fact by Apple groupies that want to live in an alternate reality.
  • jenorth, on 02/12/2008, -4/+1It makes no difference to me whether we use standard drives, or solid state.
    What I want is to get what I paid for..
    I purchased Two 200 Gig seagates. Both only show 120 gig usable from the very first day they were installed.
    My External Maxtor/seagate 250, was only 232 .
    When You buy something that claims to be 200 or 250, it should be at that face value. Let them make the drives large enough to add their software BEFORE the value amount.
    160 Gig is an awful lot to lose for 2 drives.
    • blargman, on 02/12/2008, -1/+1you sir are retarded. google base10 and base2 *rollseyes*
    • pirloui, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1250>232 is normal, but 200>120 is not... Sorry for you. Had it been an old computer, it could be because of the hardware's adressing.. If it's elder than say 6-7 years, it could be that..
      (the external is controlled by the enclosure's bridge, so that has normal capacity)
  • anarchytv, on 02/12/2008, -2/+3These flash based SSDs are even slower than RAMdrives, which are based on standard DIMMS instead of flash memory, esp. for writting. I've benchmarked them, and they are not nearly as impressive as you would think they should be. For one thing, it is incredibly foolish to access RAM through an ATA interface.... which becomes the bottleneck.

    A much better solution, would to be 100gbs of real RAM, kept alive via power and via a lithium battery backup. There would be no booting, period, because you're operating system and EVERYTHING is already IN ram. There would be no ATA bottleneck, no loading of anything, no copying from one random access type of memory to another. There would be just putting the computer to sleep and waking it back up again (as is done on XP/VISTA machines).
    • danieleran, on 02/12/2008, -0/+2Who is going to buy your $50,000 RAM disk laptop? Perhaps Apple considered the costs involved in their engineering of the Air.

    • SuperFarStucker, on 02/12/2008, -1/+1You're a complete ***** idiot and shouldn't be allowed to comment on technology. ever. For starters, an application typically creates data structures and what have you on launch which is why stuff still takes time to load even when it is in the system disk cache. For a modern machine that is the typical case, especially for commonly used applications. It's a novel concept but computation does take time and most applications are significantly more complex than whatever toy ***** you've happened to work on. The typical machine would benefit so little from such an expensive upgrade.

      As it's said: caching, hashing and adding another level of indirection can solve practically any problem.
  • blargman, on 02/12/2008, -0/+2It should be noted the drives used in mac air's are extremely slow. not trying to say ssd's aren't great but they aren't a panacea. and the drive we're comparing the ssd too is a low end one. as far as speed goes
  • Kondakarian, on 02/12/2008, -0/+1I'm interested in the battery life comparison (which is strangely missing, despite the tag). Am I blind?

    AnarchyTV's comment about RAMdrives vs. SSD is also interesting.
  • jsin1276, on 02/12/2008, -0/+0I say if you have money then go for it though for cost effectiveness it isn't worth it.
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