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 March 18th 2008 1:50AM
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