Recent Comments:
SSDs save battery power, right? Wrong. {Engadget}
Jul 1st 2008 6:58PM The "on or off, low power or full power" might hold some ground... but even so, SSD's typically use less power full load than low load/spin hard drives... This is a TH review that I would not make references to.
SSDs save battery power, right? Wrong. {Engadget}
Jul 1st 2008 6:50PM Timothy Sottek @ Jul 1st 2008 9:37AM
Tom's Hardware just did a recent comparison between SSD power consumption and traditional platter drives.
If you're going to put that in a laptop beware: SSDs drain batteries FASTER than platter drives!
BobTurbo @ Jul 1st 2008 9:54AM
"SSDs drain batteries FASTER than platter drives!"
Correction: The SSDs tested using TH's methodology did not perform as well as the platter HDD.
Timothy Sottek @ Jul 1st 2008 10:08AM
Correction, part deux:
"However, we have discovered that the power savings aren’t there: in fact, battery runtimes actually decrease if you use a flash SSD."
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html
BobTurbo @ Jul 1st 2008 10:19AM
Nope, I don't think you understand yet. Let me come back tomorrow and see if anything has changed.
(AND FINALLY)
Jeff @ Jul 1st 2008 12:36PM
I'll be less vague than Bob. The TH article was, as usual, significantly flawed. The benchmark they used to test battery life restarts itself after each completion, doing so until the battery is dead. However, the article did not report how many times the benchmark was able to run on the SSD vs. the mechanical HD.
The reason this is a critical flaw is that, as their own graphs show, the performance of the SSD was substantially better than the other HD. With a slower drive, the CPU spends a larger proportion of time in idle mode, as the system is blocking on IO, waiting for the slow drive to return data.
With the faster SSD, the CPU spends less time idling. It is using more power, but also doing more work. If TH had reported the number of times the benchmark ran on each machine, we would have seen the SSD machine run the benchmark many times more than the mechanical drive. Their conclusions are flat-out wrong.
The whole exercise was very silly to begin with. An SSD draws less power in use than a mechanical drive does while idle. Of course it will improve, or at least not effect, battery life. The article you reference is just another sad example of the decade-long slump Tom's Hardware has faced.
Mixed reality research takes a first hesitant step {Engadget}
Mar 11th 2008 7:49PM Naturally, I will be taking both the red and blue pill simultaneously...
Interspecies gaming hits GDC {Engadget}
Feb 23rd 2008 11:47AM I am Legend??
Poll: What are you doing for V-day? {Engadget}
Feb 14th 2008 7:08PM Quick question... although I know this might seem silly to some, wtf is going on in that picture???
Yes, I see the knife.
Greener Gadgets Design Competition winners on display {Engadget}
Feb 9th 2008 1:14PM Is it just me, or does anyone else actually want that lamp?
Britain's new fastest supercomputer makes its ominous debut {Engadget}
Jan 14th 2008 3:01PM LoL at 63 million...... I think you meant Trillion with at tah tah tah Tee : )
Will laser TVs be the next big thing? {Engadget}
Jan 9th 2008 4:50PM Don't laze me bro!
Army working in more Macs to diversify systems, thwart attackers {Engadget}
Dec 22nd 2007 1:24PM @ Wuju
Thanks for saving me time. Standard can I have your babies etc etc
Phosphor E Ink watch giveaway (part 3) {Engadget}
Dec 21st 2007 5:18PM Hai
