Fujitsu's Lifebook Q and B laptops get 32GB SSD

In a trend we see as nothing but good, Fujitsu just announced the availability of Samsung's 16GB or 32GB Solid State Disks in their Lifebook Q and B series laptops. Just prepare to throw down heavy on the Yen son, 'cause the SSD option demands a significant ¥84,000/¥168,000 (about $703/$1,406) premium for that flash durability, cut in weight, extended battery life, and supposed 25-to-50% reduction in boot and sleep recovery times. However, check that video of two HDD and SSD systems booting side-by-side which we can only assume are otherwise identical... not exactly twice as fast, eh?

[Via Impress]

[Eric Fetty @ Oct 13th 2006 8:56AM]

23 Seconds Vs. 30 Seconds, only a 7 Second jump in speed. That's only 10% faster.

[Igor @ Oct 13th 2006 9:05AM]

plz enlighten me how do u get only 10%?

[Matias Korhonen @ Oct 13th 2006 10:09AM]

10%? And 7 seconds? Looks more like 9 secs to me. And that would make it a 30% increase...

[Andir3.0 @ Oct 13th 2006 9:02AM]

Somehow I don't think the systems were setup the same. It looks like the right system had precaching and the left system was not. It took longer to load at the "splash" screen, but once it got to the user screen, it sped up tremendously. This is what precaching does. Maybe they turned off precaching on the left one? It did have a very noticable gain until windows started it's thing.

[Andir3.0 @ Oct 13th 2006 9:07AM]

To add, sorry.

SSDs are VERY nice if they have the correct memory in them. I seriously hope the SSD market takes off for more than one reason (size, speed, durability, and reduced heat are some of them.) I've even thought about buying some top notch drives myself just to have the benefits.

[Nick @ Oct 13th 2006 9:15AM]

7 second difference would calculate out to be about 22% faster. Personally that does not matter to me. I'd like to see how they differ is actual battery life.

[Oddmanout @ Oct 13th 2006 9:22AM]

"plz enlighten me how do u get only 10%?"

Probably by making a mathematical error. Off hand that looks to be a little over 20%

-Checks calc (is glad CPU is not a Pentium)...

It rounds to 23%.

But geez...the GOUGING! An 8GB cf card can be had for $165.

http://www.flash-memory-store.com/8gb-compact-flash.html

Which means puting 16GB of flash in this thing shouldn't cost more than $400. And 32GB shouldn't cost more than $900. Those are estimates of course, but that's a lot of cash for (performance gains that seem to amount to) kitsch.


It better be some ultra high quality/long life/lightspeed flash...

[Mignon @ Oct 13th 2006 9:22AM]

The speedup vs. a hard disk is nice, but the power savings is unfortunately minor compared to how much the CPU and backlight use. The gap narrows further if you have a power management scheme to your hard drive that is optimized for your usage. I was intrigued by this idea a while back but dropped it when I saw the power numbers.

[Eric Zarowny @ Oct 13th 2006 9:22AM]

I remember the first of these drives only came with like ATA 66. This was only a few weeks ago.

[Oddmanout @ Oct 13th 2006 9:23AM]

Interesting...on the very page whose link I posted one can purchase an 8GB laptop "HDD" for $419 (I didn't notice that before). Roughly in-line with the pricing mentioned for the Fujitsu.

WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!!??!?!?!?

(other than greed of course...)

[Per Eriksson @ Oct 13th 2006 9:59AM]

I just don't get it, why would anyone get a laptop which has 32GB of disk space? No matter what tech it is, 32GB is just so.. limiting.

[starpause @ Oct 13th 2006 10:13AM]

per ericksson: delete those pr0n torrents, you'll feel less cramped :)

durability is all i'm after. as a touring musician and commuting cyclist i've killed more than my fair share of hard disks. i'd still back my data up but maybe i wouldn't be replacing the drive in a year.

[Joe G @ Oct 13th 2006 10:50AM]

From boot until the windows logo come up it's 35% faster (9secs to 14secs)
And from boot until the Welcome screen comes on its 44% faster (16secs to 29secs).

Then the SSD Fuji sits on the welcome screen for a while for some weird (probably Windows related) reason... but until that point it was wipping butt on the HDD Fuji.

That's a pretty big freakin gain in speed!

[Brian @ Oct 13th 2006 11:57AM]

What I want to know is how much faster am I going to be able to strip DRM with FairPlay4WM? :)

But really... I'd like to see the load time difference in Vista RC1, including Windows Mail, the new IE, and the new Windows Media Player.

[j3oomerang @ Oct 13th 2006 12:21PM]

waiting for sony to implement these on their TX series with core2duo and ddr3

[Ratz @ Oct 13th 2006 3:04PM]

Don't forget that due to wear on the insulator, flash memory degrades the more frequently it's overwritten. Admittedly you'll get a few million read/write cycles per cell, which is fine for a digicam or mp3 player but without some nice algorithms to move files about on the "disk" for you, you don't want your virtual memory sitting in a flash drive.

[aaron @ Oct 13th 2006 5:43PM]

So would it be even faster with a SATA 3.0 interface? Wouldn't the operating system be wiped if the battery dies?

[evo @ Oct 13th 2006 10:55PM]

Clarification: we're both right--it's all in the phrasing. 23 seconds is a +23% improvement relative to a 30 second baseline. 30 seconds is a -30% degradation relative to a 23 second baseline.

[Reginald @ Oct 14th 2006 12:25AM]

Hmm. Now what to do with all that extra time saved in booting the laptop?

[dbell @ Oct 14th 2006 12:58AM]

ooh, ooh! I've got an idea! comment a million times after someone else has already done so that 30s to 23s is not a 10% reduction.

[Axel @ Oct 24th 2006 5:31AM]

Ummm... 23s vs. 30s is a difference of 30%. Not 10%. Not 23%. (30/23)-1 ~= 1.30

I can see how you would make the mistake of getting 23%, that's what you get by dividing 7 by 30, which gives you the boot speed _reduction_ from going the other way.

The fact that the person who corrected the 10% figure also got the math wrong really worries me.

[evo @ Oct 13th 2006 10:43PM]

Sorry Axel, your calculation of a 30% increase is incorrect. The proper calculation for percent increase/decrease is (v2-v1)/v2 * 100, where v2 is the value to compare against. Thus, 23 seconds is a 23% improvment over 30 seconds.