Bad news for those banking on
SSD as the savior of all things laptop. While the drives have been proven to improve battery life and speed start times, other drawbacks have buyers thinking second thoughts about the major premium for laptops like the MacBook Air and Lenovo X300 with SSD -- about $1000 in the case of those two. A new study shows that flash-based laptops are being returned at a rate of 10 to 20 percent for technical failure, compared to the 1 to 2 percent of regular laptop returns due to HDD issues. Perhaps it should be expected from an emerging tech like SSD, but consumers certainly aren't expected to enjoy it. Other consumers are sending 'em back just due to lackluster performance -- particular applications like streaming video and, strangely, Microsoft Outlook, see a performance hit from SSD. Hopefully speedier drives will address this latter problem, but how about everybody cuts their prices in half and we just forget the whole thing, eh?
posted Mar 18th 2008 1:50AM
Failer......really? Even my firefox spell check picks that one up
if u so good why don't you write for engadget?
lol major fail i just wrote "if u so good..."
@ D-man.
dude,who really gives a damn?Seriously.
As for the ssd's,every tech goes through it's "trial and error" phase.and most of the time it's in that phase even after the consumer gets it.But hopefully once their cheap enough that even I can afford them,99% of them will actually work.
D-Man
No worries, I saw it too. Engadget doesn't need to start making up words.
Or even better, stop paying outrageous prices for a technology that provides barely any advantages over proper hard drives.
Ducky:
Except for, you know, they're much more reliable, smaller, use less power, and make literally no noise.
Although I guess maybe SSD's aren't much more reliable, considering the article. Still, they do have their pros and cons, and to write them off entirely is kinda jumping the gun.
Maybe the consumers are buying SSD laptops, then returning laptops with rocks in the hard drive bay.
@Anthony
Yes it is bear and not bare. I made the mistake and I have no excuse.
and
@axemachine
I say Yes because you're suppose to check your articles before you submit them and take criticism when you make a mistake.
I agree but it it isn't necessary to berate the authors. Criticism needn't be rude. It's a simple matter to point out the error. These people are bloggers and they work very quickly. Mistakes are sometimes made.
Thank you for pointing that out, I actually got stuck at that word and I'm not able continue reading! Can you give us the right spelling, you know, so that we can read the rest of the article?
stuck?
@ Ron
I believe that English is not his first language and that he was probably taught very proper English. Sometimes the colloquialisms can give people a bit of trouble.
@ happy_penguin
I believe Saad Rabia was just joshing us, poking fun at D-man's presumed obligation to correct every typo Engadget editors make. As a side note, even my firefox picks "Saad Rabia" up as a typo... and "Engadget"... and "firefox"!
@ Saad
The article is using a created noun form of the word fail.
Don't josh me bro!
You guys, I was replying to D-man's comment! I mean seriously, do we have to point out typos in every single article we read on the Internet! And if you think that you are helping the dude who wrote the article can't you just say: "Hey, "failre" should be "failure", Have a nice day"... wasn't that simple and without showing how "smart" you are with English vocab!
And yes, English is my second language, obviously. I'm an Arab guy, so bare with me on the stuff that I write.
"not able continue reading"
Oh you fale, too.
oh shit, Chris, I'm a total failre. I'm not able have good life.
know what time it is?
stop ya bitchin time!!
*makes dance party sounds*
I do bare with you, Saad. And I am sorry if my assessment was incorrect. I took your post seriously. That is my own ignorance. :p I apologize if you took that as an insult. That certainly wasn't my intent. You do a helluva lot better than many of us whose native first language is English and I respect that. I only meant to help. I FAIL. :D
Um...would it not be "bear with me", as in "bearing a burden"? I'm not sure I want to "bare" anything with you. What is this, a PETA protest?
Oh boy, here we go again!
@ Saad Rabia
"I mean seriously, do we have to point out typos in every single article we read on the Internet!"
I say Yes because you're suppose to check your articles before you submit them and take criticism when you make a mistake.
Sorry about the double post. I must have hit the wrong reply link:
@Anthony
Yes it is bear and not bare. I made the mistake and I have no excuse.
and
@axemachine
I say Yes because you're suppose to check your articles before you submit them and take criticism when you make a mistake.
I agree but it it isn't necessary to berate the authors. Criticism needn't be rude. It's a simple matter to point out the error. These people are bloggers and they work very quickly. Mistakes are sometimes made.
@ axemachine: I didn't only say: "I mean seriously, do we have to point out typos in every single article we read on the Internet!"
I also said: "And if you think that you are helping the dude who wrote the article can't you just say: "Hey, "failre" should be "failure", Have a nice day"
My point is that if you think you are doing the right thing by pointing out typos, then point them out without being a smart a** about it. As happy_penguin said, these writers do this job as fast as possible and they might fall in a typo every once in a while.
@ happy_penguin: Actually, I wrote "bare" first, so I'm the one to blame. :p
haha, I love it when a grammar nazi gets nitpicky and subsequently gets flamed...
Godwin's law.
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
You managed to do it with only a few posts! Bravo.
^^^^
You can always tell the ones who just found out about godwin's law as they are so eager to show off their newfound knowledge.
Nah. I've known about it for a while.
Assumptions suck don't they?
Thank goodness this isn't Usenet then!
Indeed... you might say that it makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"
Indeed... you might say that it makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"
Well if this is true, then maybe they will put a hdd into the x300. Which is what im hoping for!
@ zomg0t
OH hell you might be right. My bad. :p
It's quite bad performance, I hope someday my 64GB Samsung SATA I drive breaks so I can return it in hopes to receive a much better SATA II model as a replacement.
In my experience SATA II doesn't mean better performance. I had two different SATA II drives in my machine which has an SATA II controller but when I moved to SATA I raptors I could feel a significant improvement. I guess the reduced response time of 10K RPM was more significant than the higher theoretical burst rate of SATA II (7.2K).
The interfaces have nothing to do with it when dealing with Sammy SATA SSD's. The SATA II model has more than twice the performance over the SATA I model, theres plenty of engadget articles about the SATA II model from Samsung. SATA I or SATA II, thats just Samsung's naming scheme.
"...but how about everybody cuts their prices in half and we just forget the whole thing, eh?"
Word.
more like three quarters
How about for free?
(You saw that coming. Admit it)
I only want 4 to 8 GB at these rates. Once they come down I'll consider buying more than I need.
I just got my x300 and your annoying (yet informative) post will not deter me from being an early adopter (who is now even poorer). I have never had a laptop that booted, registered my fingerprint and did its Windowzzzz boot-up in less than 35 seconds. I'll just make sure I have a good backup once it's fully installed...
Strangely enough, Lenovo did not install the most up-to-date version of XP and I had to wade through 60 patches before I could get going. You would think they'd come up with a new image for every new laptop. Their other Lenovo craplets were up to date, down to WinDVD...
When you buy a new PC, the only updates preinstalled are service packs. This is the same for any vendor (save for maybe boutiques). I think.
I don't see how we can have this problem with SSD. We've been using various types of flash memory in flashdrives, PDAs, digi cams and iPods for years.
In response to Zorque: They are more reliable in the physical sense since they have no moving parts. Vibration and shock is horrible for spinning drives but for flash it only gets bad if the shock begins to produce cracks.
When you pay too much for something and don't notice that it's faster by a whole lot, do you:
1. Suck it up
2. Demand your money back because of false advertising
3. Attempt to get your money back by claiming there is a technical problem
I'm guessing option 3 was used a lot.
Err, "...do notice that it's not a lot faster..."
Samsung's attempt to really make the SATA naming convention tough. SATA previously released a statement saying not to call their SATA 3.0 GBit/s stuff SATA II. And now this from Samsung?!?!
What does an SSD do that SD or CF doesn't that makes them so prone to failure?
Depends on the vendor. More of it has to do with ECC and wear-levelling which is performed in the controller design. Also, much of the SD and CF you see uses MLC based NAND flash which is rated to less write/erase cycles than SLC (100,000 vs. 10,000).
The CF and SD markets are also much more price competitive, so they don't pay much attention to reliability and performance. The SSD vendors charge a premium and "should" be delivering products that are worth that difference. The price is still coming down however vs. capacity.
SLC! I was trying to remember that for the longest time. Anyone know where I can pick up an SLC USB flash drive or know of any drives that use SLC? I hear the ironkey does but I just want a fast reliable one. Kinda off subject sorry.
10-20%
That's possibly better than the reported 1 in 6 failure rate for the XBox 360, which is (apparently) acceptable. So why all the fuss?
(Waits patiently for fanboi flames to arrive!)
Well, one difference is that there's not really much choice if you want to buy the console that plays Halo 3. So if you really want it, you take your chances.
Whereas with something you have more of a choice about, you don't buy the failure-prone stuff.
Also, I wouldn't say the 360 failure rate was acceptable. I was thinking about buying one, but after the bad word of mouth that came out after launch, I bought a PS3 instead.
Sooo... SSDs don't blend or play Doom, I guess?
Nobody's blended one yet?
Snap! It looks like I should wait to buy that Thinkpad X300 I have been eyeing.
if I'm not mistaken, Lenovo offer the option of a regular HD too.
@tek
you're, MBA offer regualr HDD option not X300, SSD only.
@ Ace b
Who gives a damn about spelling? I think a lot of people do. Spelling is important, especially in the media you read. While this was a silly mistake, it is important for Engadget to catch MOST of its mistakes, which I am sure the site does as I rarely see any. However, it's not wrong for a user to point it out. I think it's good etiquette, then Engadget will be a little more on top of things the next time.
As for your comments on SSD, I agree with you. New applications for tech take time to work the kinks out.
Kindest regards.
SSD is cool but I wonder why anyone would be nuts enough to spend hundreds more on an SSD drive over an HDD counterpart. I doubt the power savings are *that* significant and price is bound to plummet in the coming years.
If you run a business and have data on your machine that is essential for day to day operations you might consider installing one. You can either drop your laptop one day and realize that you might have just lost all your information for that day (or whenever you last backed up your data) or you don't worry at all.
All about piece of mind. Performance is just kind of a bonus (still TBD).
I get flashbacks to my post mentioning reliability issues in the last engadgets ssd article. I'm glad I don't sound like a raving madman now :)
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/11/intel-on-its-way-to-making-consumer-ssd-drives-yes-still/
Flash technology is not a wonderful unlimited rewrites device, as much as we'd like it to be. In fact, we need better, far better solid state technology for HDs sooner rather than later.
Otherwise, spinning discs for the next thirty years :p
Didn't Toshiba say recently that while it's not unlimited, it will still last years and years? As the drives get larger, wear levelling will become more effective too.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/23/samsung-puts-the-kibosh-on-ssd-reliability-worries/
It was Samsung, and I still don't believe them.
Anyone worried about data loss where it will cost them money is already running a mirror RAID, which is still cheaper than using a SSD instead of a HDD.
SSD's big claim to fame is not speed or power consumption but shock resistance, which is simply wasted on the majority of computers not "ruggidized".
SSD's primary appeal remains with military-style applications, not exactly a price-sensitive market.
So unlike traditional HDDs, it is very unlikely there will ever be any significant price competition between SSD manufacturers.
You'll *always* pay a huge premium for SSD over HDD (right now, $1000 for a 64GB SSD when a 500GB 2.5" 9.5mm HDD is $300)
If you have a RAID in your laptop and send it cruising down a flight of stairs, odds are neither HDD is going to survive.
A 10X failure rate vs. disk? Can you say "early adopter"? SSDs are an exciting future, but a future still for mainstream markets. I've posted on this several times: http://storageeffect.com/tag/flash/
Please wait till the cake is full baked to eat it.
"A new study shows that flash-based laptops are being returned at a rate of 10 to 20 percent for technical failure"
According to the story, its not a study, its a report from ONE manufacturer. This Engadget article makes it seem as though everyone shipping flash-based laptops is seeing these numbers, and its indicative of the genre. The original story does not support this. Can you clarify it a bit?
Interesting. One of the big advantages of SSD is near-zero seek times. It's of interest to note that this does not necessarily compensate for slower transfer rates.
With regular HDD capacities (and performance) soaring, I think they've got quite a bit of life left in them yet. But SSD is slowly but surely getting better (capacity/performance/price), and I believe that one day, perhaps five or ten years down the road, they'll eventually start to supplant regular drives.
After all, they've already begun to do that in the portable space. Per-gigabyte prices of flash are almost on par with the per-gigabyte cost of one-inch drives, the kind that would have to go into something like the iPhone (HDDs still rule the 1.8 inch form factor). One form factor down, three (1.8, 2.5, and 3.5) to go.
They all have read/write speeds of 100+MB/s now, get with the program.
The issue left is that flash can only write the same cell x amount of times, and to compensate for that they shuffle the data around randomly, or at least try to, but I'm not convinced that's foolproof myself, or at least not in all uses.
Oh and the $1000+ price for a mere 64GB.
No, they don't "all" have 100MB/s+ performance. If they did, then performance wouldn't be listed as a concern.
The MacBook Pro's hideously overpriced SSD drive, for example, has 48.24MB/s random uncached reads, and 16.92MB/s random uncached writes. Performance of the SSD drive in the MacBook is significantly faster than the HDD in most respects, but the MacBook's drive is significantly slower than a 2.5" notebook drive; the SSD performance is slow compared to high-end notebook drives.
For example, a high-end notebook drive will write data sequentially more than twice as fast, and can outpace the SSD on reads by something like 25% (or more). This isn't even considering the new 500GB notebook drives.
People seriously return their drives because outlook has a bug? WTF??
I'm especially surprised about mac air users not being happy with MS outlook..
As for SSD's, they are awesome. I bought a new Dell M6300 laptop with a Samsung 64Gb SATA-2 SSD installed, and it SCREAMS !!!!! It is faster than any 10K spinner I have ever used. No failure at all. It loads all apps instantly. Turn on and log in in less than 25 seconds onto my corporate domain. I have to check my sent box just to be sure my email went because the screen doesn't even flicker when I send mail even with attachments !!!
I feel sorry for you if you are waiting......I am working on building a server with a RAID 0 with banks of these drives. I don't mind paying the extra money especially when the performance increase will pay for itself !!!
John Franz
Coastal Optical Systems