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Why did you get the SSD model?
- Thread starter steffi
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I did it for heat and battery life. I am also hoping that it will make the machine feel more 'snappy'. I also have to say I did it out of curiosity. Its new'ish tech so it appealed on that front also...
It is a bit on the small side though I have to say, so will have to be a bit more careful what I carry on it.
Regards,
C
It is a bit on the small side though I have to say, so will have to be a bit more careful what I carry on it.
Regards,
C
Mostly because I had HDDs, they always fail. I was also afraid of the performance. HDD and RAM seem to be a lot more important than the CPU for most of what I'm doing.
It's because of us early adapters that you are able to get that cheap technology 2 years later. For me, 2 years is an eternity to wait for hot new tech. I, however, don't consider SSD "hot new tech" so I have no problem waiting for it. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have it in my computer, but it's not revolutionary.
You can BTO the CPU increase without the SSD and vice-versa, so I don't think anyone bought the the SSD model *just* get the CPU increase...
"No moving parts" is cool to claim, and practical, since relatively sealed units like the MBA make me worry about having to replace a mechanical hard drive. Have had to do that 10 times for 3 Powerbook G4s in the past few years, averaging 1 drive per unit per year.
Speed was also a consideration, because of the slow sounding iPod drive.
Power was a distant third.
Speed was also a consideration, because of the slow sounding iPod drive.
Power was a distant third.
I gambled and won with the SSD
I purchased the 1.8GHz model with the SSD. Based on what I had read, I gambled that it would make a fast boot drive. Using QuickBench from SpeedTools.com, I averaged 5 runs of small random transfers ranging from 4K to 1MB. Why? Because Mac OS X spends most of its time doing small random transfers of varying size. Check out how the SSD did against the two most popular MacBook Pro 2.5 inch notebook drives:
MacBook Air 64GB SSD = 35MB/s READ, 16MB/s WRITE (one-third full)
250GB 5400RPM Hitachi = 13MB/s READ, 12MB/s WRITE (empty)
200GB 7200RPM Hitachi = 16MB/s READ, 15MB/s WRITE (empty)
It gets better. The SSD doesn't slow down when it gets full. A conventional HDD slows as it fills. For example, I have a MacBook Pro with a 160GB 7K internal drive. It's two-thirds filled. The random READ and WRITE has dropped to 12MB/s.
I can confirm that when I opened the lid for the first time, the 64GB SSD (55GB formatted) only had 38GB unused. So I'm going to be exercising restraint on what I put on it.
I purchased the 1.8GHz model with the SSD. Based on what I had read, I gambled that it would make a fast boot drive. Using QuickBench from SpeedTools.com, I averaged 5 runs of small random transfers ranging from 4K to 1MB. Why? Because Mac OS X spends most of its time doing small random transfers of varying size. Check out how the SSD did against the two most popular MacBook Pro 2.5 inch notebook drives:
MacBook Air 64GB SSD = 35MB/s READ, 16MB/s WRITE (one-third full)
250GB 5400RPM Hitachi = 13MB/s READ, 12MB/s WRITE (empty)
200GB 7200RPM Hitachi = 16MB/s READ, 15MB/s WRITE (empty)
It gets better. The SSD doesn't slow down when it gets full. A conventional HDD slows as it fills. For example, I have a MacBook Pro with a 160GB 7K internal drive. It's two-thirds filled. The random READ and WRITE has dropped to 12MB/s.
I can confirm that when I opened the lid for the first time, the 64GB SSD (55GB formatted) only had 38GB unused. So I'm going to be exercising restraint on what I put on it.
You can get the 1.8 with or without the SSD. And you can get the SSD with or without the 1.8.
So after about 8 hours of using this thing, I have to say I love the SSD.
Eclipse starts up as fast on this thing than it does on my Mac Pro with Raid 0. Maybe faster, I have to do them head to head at some point.
Other apps load very quickly also. Spotlight is very quick. I guess you don't realize what a big deal seek time is in normal everyday usage.
The SSD is a real treat.
So after about 8 hours of using this thing, I have to say I love the SSD.
Eclipse starts up as fast on this thing than it does on my Mac Pro with Raid 0. Maybe faster, I have to do them head to head at some point.
Other apps load very quickly also. Spotlight is very quick. I guess you don't realize what a big deal seek time is in normal everyday usage.
The SSD is a real treat.
I have to say part of me wishes i spent the extra and went with SSD. Honestly I deal with ThinkPad's alot at work and some of the older x41 and x41 tablets used the 1.8" Hard drives that are 4200RPM. They werent the fastest things on the planet and reliability was a def. issue. The Demo units we had got passed around quite a bit and I'm positive were abused alot more than I will ever abused a Macbook Air, but we replaced 2 of them a few months ago. That being said Im slight hesitant to be using a 1.8" hard drive, so if nothing else I would feel more comfortable in terms of reliability using the SSD.
Aside from that performance is fantastic, I also have an eeepc and the thing boots instantly and its very minimal specs and pales in even comparison to a MBA.
Aside from that performance is fantastic, I also have an eeepc and the thing boots instantly and its very minimal specs and pales in even comparison to a MBA.
Anyone have benchmarks? All the ones i've seen from xbench were, let's say, less than impressive.
That's the thing about benchmarks, right? I mean one thing that you see in those benchmarks is the speed of random reads. But in the benchmark reports that is just one line.
In real life, though, when it comes to booting, loading apps, using coverflow, flipping through iPhoto, etc, you realize that one line is a big deal in everyday usage.
The SSD model is incredibly fast. I was at the Apple store today and I played with one sitting next to a 2.4Ghz MBP. The SSD AIR was spot on in speed. Opening the heavier apps like iMovie was really fast and faster than the MBP. Most apps opened roughly the same between both machines but the AIR was never slower than the MBP. I'll be buying the 1.8 SSD AIR.
The SSD option sure cost a lot, but the price was pretty reasonable when compared to the street price of a 64GB SSD disk so it wasn't a case of Steve just ripping everyone off (like it has been occasionally with the RAM prices).
The SSD capacity will rise and price will drop probably quite fast but the plunge has to be made at some point eventually. Plus we were ordering Airs _now_ and decided that the SSD disk is a pretty perfect match for what we see the Air being as a concept. If the case had been about ordinary MacBooks or Pros, we would probably have gone with HDDs.
The SSD capacity will rise and price will drop probably quite fast but the plunge has to be made at some point eventually. Plus we were ordering Airs _now_ and decided that the SSD disk is a pretty perfect match for what we see the Air being as a concept. If the case had been about ordinary MacBooks or Pros, we would probably have gone with HDDs.
Why I went for the solid state drive:
1. i have no requirement for a lot of data storage on my MB Air. So, the 64Gb limit now on the SSD is fine. Everything the Air knows in the morning will have come from an archive. Everything it knows by nightfall will end up in an archive. What's on there is transient and doesn't require a lot of context to serve my needs. There will be plenty room for extracts from my other machines' iTunes libraries. Throwaway playlists. Some TV shows.
2. speed, less wear and tear on the thing having to wake up two or three dozen times a day to find out what the heck I want now. Kinda like a nano on a lanyard when you're trying to listen to a long album but the phone keeps ringing. The nano doesn't care how many times I hit pause and play. Drives are cheap enough to replace, but if they aren't there they can't break down.
3. "Evolve or Die," we always used to say at the job. Take it to the next level. There will be some application-centric spinoff from using flash as startup storage. I don't know what it is yet but Apple probably has more than a clue and I want to see what happens next. The ticket to that is buying into the tech as it's rolled out. I signed onto that long ago, I know the drill on risking early obsolescence by early adoption and it just doesn't faze me.
4. One of my uncles told me a long time ago there can be times when it's better to spend a hundred bucks than to break a twenty dollar bill. I have come to know exactly what he meant by that, and have acted accordingly by putting $3k into my MacBook Air config.
1. i have no requirement for a lot of data storage on my MB Air. So, the 64Gb limit now on the SSD is fine. Everything the Air knows in the morning will have come from an archive. Everything it knows by nightfall will end up in an archive. What's on there is transient and doesn't require a lot of context to serve my needs. There will be plenty room for extracts from my other machines' iTunes libraries. Throwaway playlists. Some TV shows.
2. speed, less wear and tear on the thing having to wake up two or three dozen times a day to find out what the heck I want now. Kinda like a nano on a lanyard when you're trying to listen to a long album but the phone keeps ringing. The nano doesn't care how many times I hit pause and play. Drives are cheap enough to replace, but if they aren't there they can't break down.
3. "Evolve or Die," we always used to say at the job. Take it to the next level. There will be some application-centric spinoff from using flash as startup storage. I don't know what it is yet but Apple probably has more than a clue and I want to see what happens next. The ticket to that is buying into the tech as it's rolled out. I signed onto that long ago, I know the drill on risking early obsolescence by early adoption and it just doesn't faze me.
4. One of my uncles told me a long time ago there can be times when it's better to spend a hundred bucks than to break a twenty dollar bill. I have come to know exactly what he meant by that, and have acted accordingly by putting $3k into my MacBook Air config.