Hard disk prices are really coming down, there is no way than in 2 years Nand will be only 14 times the cost of HD.
To make a fair point I trew away priceses for desktop drives, so the ones below are for laptop drives and came from newegg.com:
120 G - $74.99 - Cost per Gig 63 cents (rounded up)
200 G - 159.99 - Cost per Gig 80 cents (rounded up)
160 G - 119.99 - Cost per Gig 75 cents (rounded up)
100 G - $89.99 - Cost per Gig 90 cents (rounded up)
40 G - $45.99 - Cost per Gig $1.14 (rounded up)
Actually, it's already at that point. You can buy a 1GB memory card for about $11 nowadays. Assume for the sake of argument that you can just scale that up to 200GB with a linear increase in price. That's $2200. Which actually is about 14x the cost of the 200GB drive you listed. It's even less if you consider that 2GB cards go for as little as $15.
For $350 they are very attractive in the upper tier notebook market. If you're already shelling out $2500+ and extra $350 isn't a deal killer for quick boot times, longer battery life and not having to worry about a dead HDD because you banged your laptop at the wrong time or place.
I can see them appearing in Panasonic Toughbooks soon if they haven't already. Heck, Dell just announced that they are offering the 1.8 32GB SSD on the Latitude D420 ultra-portable and D620 semi-rugged nitebooks...for $549 retail.
Flash prices have been in freefall the last couple years. I suspect that these estimates are assuming they remain in freefall through 2009.
NAND durability is actually pretty good and don't have the same failure modes as HDDs. You're not likely to see a flash drive fail due to excessive writes before your HDD crashes anyway. Certainly not for the 1.8" and 2.5" drive form factors.
Between wearing algorithms and the extra blocks on flash to replace dead blocks the write life of a SSD in a mobile environment is a non-issue vs HDDs. Perhaps even on the desktop given that there is some question over the MTBF reported by HDD makers.
Vinea
I'd like to second you on that point. Many people seem to be hung up on theoretical limits, which when calculated, are actually extremely long. Like this article, which pegs the lifetime of a 64 GB SSD being written to continuously at 80 MB/s at 51 years:
This, along with the decrease in power consumption, heat, and little performance degradation due to the drive being full means that I am going to gladly pay a couple hundred dollars more for a solid state drive next time I get a laptop.
I think we're misreading the 60% share...look later in the article:
According to iSuppli, ultraportable sub-notebooks and mainstream models will show similar penetration of flash data storage throughout the next two years. The firm estimates that more than half, or 54 percent, of the ultraportable PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009 will use HHDs, while 28 percent will employ SSDs. Similarly, it expects 58 percent of mainstream notebooks will use HHDs, and 25 percent will use SSDs.
60% HHD, 25-28% SSD.
25% SSD penetration by 2009 is believeable. 60% hybrids I don't buy so much.
For $350 they are very attractive in the upper tier notebook market. If you're already shelling out $2500+ and extra $350 isn't a deal killer for quick boot times, longer battery life and not having to worry about a dead HDD because you banged your laptop at the wrong time or place.
I can see them appearing in Panasonic Toughbooks soon if they haven't already. Heck, Dell just announced that they are offering the 1.8 32GB SSD on the Latitude D420 ultra-portable and D620 semi-rugged nitebooks...for $549 retail.
Nice.
Vinea
That's why I said "mostly". I agree with the concept of his analysis, though I don't think the lifetime issues will be too big a concern, mainly as Samsung and others already have much better technologies in the wings that will be out next year.
As for prices, well, we already went through this all before.
My thoughts are that the prices are between 12 and 20 times right now, depending on various factors.
I also think that by third quarter 2009, the difference will likely be between 3 and 6 times. I don't see how anyone can get a closer estimate for that far out.
What may affect this is that possibly 2.5" drives will be reserved for the larger laptops where vast amounts of storage will be wanted, whereas the more expensive per GB 1.8" drives will dominate most anything else. That's where the FLASH drives will compete.
But, all HD's will be much cheaper per GB than they are now as well.
I think we're misreading the 60% share...look later in the article:
According to iSuppli, ultraportable sub-notebooks and mainstream models will show similar penetration of flash data storage throughout the next two years. The firm estimates that more than half, or 54 percent, of the ultraportable PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009 will use HHDs, while 28 percent will employ SSDs. Similarly, it expects 58 percent of mainstream notebooks will use HHDs, and 25 percent will use SSDs.
60% HDD, 25-28% SSD.
25% SSD penetration by 2009 is believeable.
The 60% must include Robson.
Vinea
I'm not sure they mean Robson. More likely they mean Samsungs (and others) hybrid drives, if they mean anything like that at all, and the numbers aren't simply an error.
I think some are completely missing the point of the article.
It clearly says that 60% of laptops will include some sort of Flash drive. It doesn't say that they won't eliminate the hard drives.
This can be taken to say that simply a flash drive will be installed for your OS, and your data still gets stored on a hard drive. For that to happen, you just stick a 20 gig flash card in the machine, and you're off and running. I'd be surprised if any NEW models of computers that come out in 2009 don't have that option. The only ones being sold without that would be older designs that haven't been updated yet.
I think some are completely missing the point of the article.
It clearly says that 60% of laptops will include some sort of Flash drive. It doesn't say that they won't eliminate the hard drives.
This can be taken to say that simply a flash drive will be installed for your OS, and your data still gets stored on a hard drive. For that to happen, you just stick a 20 gig flash card in the machine, and you're off and running. I'd be surprised if any NEW models of computers that come out in 2009 don't have that option. The only ones being sold without that would be older designs that haven't been updated yet.
A little late? That's less than two years, that would comprise a practically miraculous uptake, I think it's unrealistic.
I think 2009 is late too but I don't mean relative to the present time. I think it's late already. I expected flash to be much further on than it is today. I wished we had flash drives mainstream already but they are still far from being affordable enough.
I'm beginning to think standard hard drives will always be in the lead if they can always offer a price advantage. If you can get a laptop £200 cheaper by using standard drives, I reckon the majority of people will go for it despite the advantages it offers and I think this will be a major drawback in its uptake.
It needs to be competitive and for that we need drives over 100GB for no more than £100 on top of a standard drive of the same size.
It's all well and good prices are coming down, but what they are forgetting is that while 120GB is good for a notebook now, in 2009 laptops will need more like 400GB's. Now I wonder what a 400GB SSD drive will cost in 2009?
I think 2009 is late too but I don't mean relative to the present time. I think it's late already. I expected flash to be much further on than it is today. I wished we had flash drives mainstream already but they are still far from being affordable enough.
I'm beginning to think standard hard drives will always be in the lead if they can always offer a price advantage. If you can get a laptop £200 cheaper by using standard drives, I reckon the majority of people will go for it despite the advantages it offers and I think this will be a major drawback in its uptake.
It needs to be competitive and for that we need drives over 100GB for no more than £100 on top of a standard drive of the same size.
We have to figure out what advantages to most people SSD will actually have.
As most consumers are mostly interested in price, and how much they can get for it, SSD won't seem to be much of an advantage, and may be seen as a disadvantage to most, unless they are forced into it.
Remember Beta vs. VHS. Beta WAS better, but VHS was cheaper, and offered longer recording times, even though the longest time (8 hours) was essentially useless. It was the perception of value. The same was true with the "Super" versions of both formats. It cost more, and so US buyers avoided it.
Apple may have an advantage here over PC companies as Apple doesn't compete in that low end laptop space. Therefore, Apple could possibly get away with charging more for one. But I thought I saw something that said Apple wouldn't be having machines until possibly 2009 with SSD drives.
Actually, it's already at that point. You can buy a 1GB memory card for about $11 nowadays. Assume for the sake of argument that you can just scale that up to 200GB with a linear increase in price. That's $2200. Which actually is about 14x the cost of the 200GB drive you listed. It's even less if you consider that 2GB cards go for as little as $15.
Intel's Robson puts the NAND on the logic board, while the the other manufacturer's options put it with the HDD. I have yet to decide which is a better overall solution.
Obviously Intel likes the logic board solution.
If the NAND does have a very long life expectancy, then I think I prefer it separate from the HDDrive which can be the weak link, esp. in a laptop that might sustain abuse.
However there is a kind of elegance to being able to view the flash and HDDrive as one component that can be designed for, upgraded and replaced.
Is there any quality in OSX that makes one better than the other?
We have to figure out what advantages to most people SSD will actually have.
Power consumption and ruggedness at the expense of price and size.
There are two laptop segments that will readily adopt SSDs: ultra portables and rugged/semi-rugged laptops. If Apple has an ultra-thin then they'll likely use SSDs. No reason not to given the product will be pricey anyway.
We have to figure out what advantages to most people SSD will actually have.
As most consumers are mostly interested in price, and how much they can get for it, SSD won't seem to be much of an advantage, and may be seen as a disadvantage to most, unless they are forced into it.
I think it depends on how Apple packages and markets it. The public took to the iPod mini and later, nano pretty well. Mini was only moderately more compact and had a huge trade-off in capacity for not much less. nano was yet another step back in capacity, but at least the much more compact size was clearer difference. In most of the marketing that I've seen, they almost don't mention the durability difference.
Quote:
Remember Beta vs. VHS. Beta WAS better, but VHS was cheaper, and offered longer recording times, even though the longest time (8 hours) was essentially useless. It was the perception of value. The same was true with the "Super" versions of both formats. It cost more, and so US buyers avoided it.
I used the longest play mode for quite some time, I was too cheap to buy a lot of tapes. For my meager TV at the time, the difference wasn't that significant, though this was the 90's and not when it was first introduced.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacGregor
Obviously Intel likes the logic board solution.
If the NAND does have a very long life expectancy, then I think I prefer it separate from the HDDrive which can be the weak link, esp. in a laptop that might sustain abuse.
However there is a kind of elegance to being able to view the flash and HDDrive as one component that can be designed for, upgraded and replaced.
Is there any quality in OSX that makes one better than the other?
Given that Robson really isn't available to the public yet, it's hard to compare the merits based on a real device rather than lofty theoreticals. I think it also needs to be supported in the OS too to work at all. It's doubly hard to compare the merits when for all I know, OS X doesn't take advantage of either feature. Maybe in Leopard, assuming Apple choses to use either, and they may chose to only implement one at the expense of the other, and possibly for reasons not entirely technical. OS X boots so quickly that I wonder if there is any advantage to either given that is its the main selling point. If it speeds up hibernation a lot then I'll be all over it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by guns
I'd like to second you on that point. Many people seem to be hung up on theoretical limits, which when calculated, are actually extremely long. Like this article, which pegs the lifetime of a 64 GB SSD being written to continuously at 80 MB/s at 51 years:
Those numbers assume that you have continual access to the entire drive. I don't think that takes into account having a lot of files that rarely change. I've never seen wear-leveling in action, so I don't know. I've never seen it described very well either, in terms of how it does it and how well it handles the situation I just described, which is far more likely than being able to assume the whole drive is free. It's a nice concept but I'd rather see an actual SSD maker describe it in detail than a third party. But if you have a good chunk of your drive as files that practically never change, then I don't think wear-leveling would do much other than wear-level your meager free space with your often-changed files.
There are two laptop segments that will readily adopt SSDs: ultra portables and rugged/semi-rugged laptops. If Apple has an ultra-thin then they'll likely use SSDs. No reason not to given the product will be pricey anyway.
Ultralights aren't necessarily ultra-expensive. Look at the Averatec 1579. 3.4 pounds, Core Duo ULV (okay, only 1GHz) and only $1300. There's really no reason Apple couldn't do something similar for $1500-1600.
Also, why this emphasis on thinness? I don't think most people care about thinness beyond a certain point (1" seems about right). Weight is much more important. I wouldn't really care if it was 2" thick if it was a svelte 2.5 pounds. For 1", I'd be willing to put up with 3 to 3.5 pounds. On an airline tray or a desk, there's really no difference between 1" and 2". Width and depth are more important dimensions.
Power consumption and ruggedness at the expense of price and size.
There are two laptop segments that will readily adopt SSDs: ultra portables and rugged/semi-rugged laptops. If Apple has an ultra-thin then they'll likely use SSDs. No reason not to given the product will be pricey anyway.
Vinea
Those are the actual advantages. I meant the advantages to the cost concious public, who won't be aware of those, or even care that much.
I think it depends on how Apple packages and markets it. The public took to the iPod mini and later, nano pretty well. Mini was only moderately more compact and had a huge trade-off in capacity for not much less. nano was yet another step back in capacity, but at least the much more compact size was clearer difference. In most of the marketing that I've seen, they almost don't mention the durability difference.
Yes, marketing is everything.
9quote]
I used the longest play mode for quite some time, I was too cheap to buy a lot of tapes. For my meager TV at the time, the difference wasn't that significant, though this was the 90's and not when it was first introduced. [/quote]
Did you use the 8 hour tapes? That was where the problems arose. The 6 hour times were fine, though a bit on the low quality side, but the 8 hour tapes were almost unwatchable, and they used to break and snarl up regularly. They were so thin that a piece of tape would almost float in the air.
Quote:
Given that Robson really isn't available to the public yet, it's hard to compare the merits based on a real device rather than lofty theoreticals. I think it also needs to be supported in the OS too to work at all. It's doubly hard to compare the merits when for all I know, OS X doesn't take advantage of either feature. Maybe in Leopard, assuming Apple choses to use either, and they may chose to only implement one at the expense of the other, and possibly for reasons not entirely technical. OS X boots so quickly that I wonder if there is any advantage to either given that is its the main selling point. If it speeds up hibernation a lot then I'll be all over it.
Right, OS X must support it.
Quote:
Those numbers assume that you have continual access to the entire drive. I don't think that takes into account having a lot of files that rarely change. I've never seen wear-leveling in action, so I don't know. I've never seen it described very well either, in terms of how it does it and how well it handles the situation I just described, which is far more likely than being able to assume the whole drive is free. It's a nice concept but I'd rather see an actual SSD maker describe it in detail than a third party. But if you have a good chunk of your drive as files that practically never change, then I don't think wear-leveling would do much other than wear-level your meager free space with your often-changed files.
Wear leveling assumes a best case situation. If you have a lot of small files that regularly change, and you leave a large portion of your disk free, then wear leveling works well. But if you have mostly large files that change often, and most of your disk is full with them, then it doesn't work as well.
Comments
Hard disk prices are really coming down, there is no way than in 2 years Nand will be only 14 times the cost of HD.
To make a fair point I trew away priceses for desktop drives, so the ones below are for laptop drives and came from newegg.com:
120 G - $74.99 - Cost per Gig 63 cents (rounded up)
200 G - 159.99 - Cost per Gig 80 cents (rounded up)
160 G - 119.99 - Cost per Gig 75 cents (rounded up)
100 G - $89.99 - Cost per Gig 90 cents (rounded up)
40 G - $45.99 - Cost per Gig $1.14 (rounded up)
Actually, it's already at that point. You can buy a 1GB memory card for about $11 nowadays. Assume for the sake of argument that you can just scale that up to 200GB with a linear increase in price. That's $2200. Which actually is about 14x the cost of the 200GB drive you listed. It's even less if you consider that 2GB cards go for as little as $15.
No. If anything, it might be a bit early.
I agree with most of Clive's analysis. Prices will remain much higher, even though they are coming down rapidly.
2.5" 40GB ATA are $50 retail. SanDisk announced their 32GB SSD for $350 at volume to OEMs. That's within the 14x metric.
http://www.sandisk.com/Oem/DocumentI...ocumentID=3732
For $350 they are very attractive in the upper tier notebook market. If you're already shelling out $2500+ and extra $350 isn't a deal killer for quick boot times, longer battery life and not having to worry about a dead HDD because you banged your laptop at the wrong time or place.
I can see them appearing in Panasonic Toughbooks soon if they haven't already. Heck, Dell just announced that they are offering the 1.8 32GB SSD on the Latitude D420 ultra-portable and D620 semi-rugged nitebooks...for $549 retail.
Nice.
Vinea
Flash prices have been in freefall the last couple years. I suspect that these estimates are assuming they remain in freefall through 2009.
NAND durability is actually pretty good and don't have the same failure modes as HDDs. You're not likely to see a flash drive fail due to excessive writes before your HDD crashes anyway. Certainly not for the 1.8" and 2.5" drive form factors.
Between wearing algorithms and the extra blocks on flash to replace dead blocks the write life of a SSD in a mobile environment is a non-issue vs HDDs. Perhaps even on the desktop given that there is some question over the MTBF reported by HDD makers.
Vinea
I'd like to second you on that point. Many people seem to be hung up on theoretical limits, which when calculated, are actually extremely long. Like this article, which pegs the lifetime of a 64 GB SSD being written to continuously at 80 MB/s at 51 years:
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html
This, along with the decrease in power consumption, heat, and little performance degradation due to the drive being full means that I am going to gladly pay a couple hundred dollars more for a solid state drive next time I get a laptop.
According to iSuppli, ultraportable sub-notebooks and mainstream models will show similar penetration of flash data storage throughout the next two years. The firm estimates that more than half, or 54 percent, of the ultraportable PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009 will use HHDs, while 28 percent will employ SSDs. Similarly, it expects 58 percent of mainstream notebooks will use HHDs, and 25 percent will use SSDs.
60% HHD, 25-28% SSD.
25% SSD penetration by 2009 is believeable. 60% hybrids I don't buy so much.
Vinea
Edit: Removed dumb statements.
2.5" 40GB ATA are $50 retail. SanDisk announced their 32GB SSD for $350 at volume to OEMs. That's within the 14x metric.
http://www.sandisk.com/Oem/DocumentI...ocumentID=3732
For $350 they are very attractive in the upper tier notebook market. If you're already shelling out $2500+ and extra $350 isn't a deal killer for quick boot times, longer battery life and not having to worry about a dead HDD because you banged your laptop at the wrong time or place.
I can see them appearing in Panasonic Toughbooks soon if they haven't already. Heck, Dell just announced that they are offering the 1.8 32GB SSD on the Latitude D420 ultra-portable and D620 semi-rugged nitebooks...for $549 retail.
Nice.
Vinea
That's why I said "mostly". I agree with the concept of his analysis, though I don't think the lifetime issues will be too big a concern, mainly as Samsung and others already have much better technologies in the wings that will be out next year.
As for prices, well, we already went through this all before.
My thoughts are that the prices are between 12 and 20 times right now, depending on various factors.
I also think that by third quarter 2009, the difference will likely be between 3 and 6 times. I don't see how anyone can get a closer estimate for that far out.
What may affect this is that possibly 2.5" drives will be reserved for the larger laptops where vast amounts of storage will be wanted, whereas the more expensive per GB 1.8" drives will dominate most anything else. That's where the FLASH drives will compete.
But, all HD's will be much cheaper per GB than they are now as well.
I think we're misreading the 60% share...look later in the article:
According to iSuppli, ultraportable sub-notebooks and mainstream models will show similar penetration of flash data storage throughout the next two years. The firm estimates that more than half, or 54 percent, of the ultraportable PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009 will use HHDs, while 28 percent will employ SSDs. Similarly, it expects 58 percent of mainstream notebooks will use HHDs, and 25 percent will use SSDs.
60% HDD, 25-28% SSD.
25% SSD penetration by 2009 is believeable.
The 60% must include Robson.
Vinea
I'm not sure they mean Robson. More likely they mean Samsungs (and others) hybrid drives, if they mean anything like that at all, and the numbers aren't simply an error.
It clearly says that 60% of laptops will include some sort of Flash drive. It doesn't say that they won't eliminate the hard drives.
This can be taken to say that simply a flash drive will be installed for your OS, and your data still gets stored on a hard drive. For that to happen, you just stick a 20 gig flash card in the machine, and you're off and running. I'd be surprised if any NEW models of computers that come out in 2009 don't have that option. The only ones being sold without that would be older designs that haven't been updated yet.
I think some are completely missing the point of the article.
It clearly says that 60% of laptops will include some sort of Flash drive. It doesn't say that they won't eliminate the hard drives.
This can be taken to say that simply a flash drive will be installed for your OS, and your data still gets stored on a hard drive. For that to happen, you just stick a 20 gig flash card in the machine, and you're off and running. I'd be surprised if any NEW models of computers that come out in 2009 don't have that option. The only ones being sold without that would be older designs that haven't been updated yet.
That's a possibility.
A little late? That's less than two years, that would comprise a practically miraculous uptake, I think it's unrealistic.
I think 2009 is late too but I don't mean relative to the present time. I think it's late already. I expected flash to be much further on than it is today. I wished we had flash drives mainstream already but they are still far from being affordable enough.
I'm beginning to think standard hard drives will always be in the lead if they can always offer a price advantage. If you can get a laptop £200 cheaper by using standard drives, I reckon the majority of people will go for it despite the advantages it offers and I think this will be a major drawback in its uptake.
It needs to be competitive and for that we need drives over 100GB for no more than £100 on top of a standard drive of the same size.
I think 2009 is late too but I don't mean relative to the present time. I think it's late already. I expected flash to be much further on than it is today. I wished we had flash drives mainstream already but they are still far from being affordable enough.
I'm beginning to think standard hard drives will always be in the lead if they can always offer a price advantage. If you can get a laptop £200 cheaper by using standard drives, I reckon the majority of people will go for it despite the advantages it offers and I think this will be a major drawback in its uptake.
It needs to be competitive and for that we need drives over 100GB for no more than £100 on top of a standard drive of the same size.
We have to figure out what advantages to most people SSD will actually have.
As most consumers are mostly interested in price, and how much they can get for it, SSD won't seem to be much of an advantage, and may be seen as a disadvantage to most, unless they are forced into it.
Remember Beta vs. VHS. Beta WAS better, but VHS was cheaper, and offered longer recording times, even though the longest time (8 hours) was essentially useless. It was the perception of value. The same was true with the "Super" versions of both formats. It cost more, and so US buyers avoided it.
Apple may have an advantage here over PC companies as Apple doesn't compete in that low end laptop space. Therefore, Apple could possibly get away with charging more for one. But I thought I saw something that said Apple wouldn't be having machines until possibly 2009 with SSD drives.
Actually, it's already at that point. You can buy a 1GB memory card for about $11 nowadays. Assume for the sake of argument that you can just scale that up to 200GB with a linear increase in price. That's $2200. Which actually is about 14x the cost of the 200GB drive you listed. It's even less if you consider that 2GB cards go for as little as $15.
Well I guess I stand corrected.
Intel's Robson puts the NAND on the logic board, while the the other manufacturer's options put it with the HDD. I have yet to decide which is a better overall solution.
Obviously Intel likes the logic board solution.
If the NAND does have a very long life expectancy, then I think I prefer it separate from the HDDrive which can be the weak link, esp. in a laptop that might sustain abuse.
However there is a kind of elegance to being able to view the flash and HDDrive as one component that can be designed for, upgraded and replaced.
Is there any quality in OSX that makes one better than the other?
Is there any quality in OSX that makes one better than the other?
Hopefully ZFS.
We have to figure out what advantages to most people SSD will actually have.
Power consumption and ruggedness at the expense of price and size.
There are two laptop segments that will readily adopt SSDs: ultra portables and rugged/semi-rugged laptops. If Apple has an ultra-thin then they'll likely use SSDs. No reason not to given the product will be pricey anyway.
Vinea
We have to figure out what advantages to most people SSD will actually have.
As most consumers are mostly interested in price, and how much they can get for it, SSD won't seem to be much of an advantage, and may be seen as a disadvantage to most, unless they are forced into it.
I think it depends on how Apple packages and markets it. The public took to the iPod mini and later, nano pretty well. Mini was only moderately more compact and had a huge trade-off in capacity for not much less. nano was yet another step back in capacity, but at least the much more compact size was clearer difference. In most of the marketing that I've seen, they almost don't mention the durability difference.
Remember Beta vs. VHS. Beta WAS better, but VHS was cheaper, and offered longer recording times, even though the longest time (8 hours) was essentially useless. It was the perception of value. The same was true with the "Super" versions of both formats. It cost more, and so US buyers avoided it.
I used the longest play mode for quite some time, I was too cheap to buy a lot of tapes. For my meager TV at the time, the difference wasn't that significant, though this was the 90's and not when it was first introduced.
Obviously Intel likes the logic board solution.
If the NAND does have a very long life expectancy, then I think I prefer it separate from the HDDrive which can be the weak link, esp. in a laptop that might sustain abuse.
However there is a kind of elegance to being able to view the flash and HDDrive as one component that can be designed for, upgraded and replaced.
Is there any quality in OSX that makes one better than the other?
Given that Robson really isn't available to the public yet, it's hard to compare the merits based on a real device rather than lofty theoreticals. I think it also needs to be supported in the OS too to work at all. It's doubly hard to compare the merits when for all I know, OS X doesn't take advantage of either feature. Maybe in Leopard, assuming Apple choses to use either, and they may chose to only implement one at the expense of the other, and possibly for reasons not entirely technical. OS X boots so quickly that I wonder if there is any advantage to either given that is its the main selling point. If it speeds up hibernation a lot then I'll be all over it.
I'd like to second you on that point. Many people seem to be hung up on theoretical limits, which when calculated, are actually extremely long. Like this article, which pegs the lifetime of a 64 GB SSD being written to continuously at 80 MB/s at 51 years:
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html
Those numbers assume that you have continual access to the entire drive. I don't think that takes into account having a lot of files that rarely change. I've never seen wear-leveling in action, so I don't know. I've never seen it described very well either, in terms of how it does it and how well it handles the situation I just described, which is far more likely than being able to assume the whole drive is free. It's a nice concept but I'd rather see an actual SSD maker describe it in detail than a third party. But if you have a good chunk of your drive as files that practically never change, then I don't think wear-leveling would do much other than wear-level your meager free space with your often-changed files.
There are two laptop segments that will readily adopt SSDs: ultra portables and rugged/semi-rugged laptops. If Apple has an ultra-thin then they'll likely use SSDs. No reason not to given the product will be pricey anyway.
Ultralights aren't necessarily ultra-expensive. Look at the Averatec 1579. 3.4 pounds, Core Duo ULV (okay, only 1GHz) and only $1300. There's really no reason Apple couldn't do something similar for $1500-1600.
Also, why this emphasis on thinness? I don't think most people care about thinness beyond a certain point (1" seems about right). Weight is much more important. I wouldn't really care if it was 2" thick if it was a svelte 2.5 pounds. For 1", I'd be willing to put up with 3 to 3.5 pounds. On an airline tray or a desk, there's really no difference between 1" and 2". Width and depth are more important dimensions.
Power consumption and ruggedness at the expense of price and size.
There are two laptop segments that will readily adopt SSDs: ultra portables and rugged/semi-rugged laptops. If Apple has an ultra-thin then they'll likely use SSDs. No reason not to given the product will be pricey anyway.
Vinea
Those are the actual advantages. I meant the advantages to the cost concious public, who won't be aware of those, or even care that much.
I think it depends on how Apple packages and markets it. The public took to the iPod mini and later, nano pretty well. Mini was only moderately more compact and had a huge trade-off in capacity for not much less. nano was yet another step back in capacity, but at least the much more compact size was clearer difference. In most of the marketing that I've seen, they almost don't mention the durability difference.
Yes, marketing is everything.
9quote]
I used the longest play mode for quite some time, I was too cheap to buy a lot of tapes. For my meager TV at the time, the difference wasn't that significant, though this was the 90's and not when it was first introduced. [/quote]
Did you use the 8 hour tapes? That was where the problems arose. The 6 hour times were fine, though a bit on the low quality side, but the 8 hour tapes were almost unwatchable, and they used to break and snarl up regularly. They were so thin that a piece of tape would almost float in the air.
Given that Robson really isn't available to the public yet, it's hard to compare the merits based on a real device rather than lofty theoreticals. I think it also needs to be supported in the OS too to work at all. It's doubly hard to compare the merits when for all I know, OS X doesn't take advantage of either feature. Maybe in Leopard, assuming Apple choses to use either, and they may chose to only implement one at the expense of the other, and possibly for reasons not entirely technical. OS X boots so quickly that I wonder if there is any advantage to either given that is its the main selling point. If it speeds up hibernation a lot then I'll be all over it.
Right, OS X must support it.
Those numbers assume that you have continual access to the entire drive. I don't think that takes into account having a lot of files that rarely change. I've never seen wear-leveling in action, so I don't know. I've never seen it described very well either, in terms of how it does it and how well it handles the situation I just described, which is far more likely than being able to assume the whole drive is free. It's a nice concept but I'd rather see an actual SSD maker describe it in detail than a third party. But if you have a good chunk of your drive as files that practically never change, then I don't think wear-leveling would do much other than wear-level your meager free space with your often-changed files.
Wear leveling assumes a best case situation. If you have a lot of small files that regularly change, and you leave a large portion of your disk free, then wear leveling works well. But if you have mostly large files that change often, and most of your disk is full with them, then it doesn't work as well.