Also SSDs are just taking a nap. They’ll be back by summer.

I hate HDD…they always seem to fail me.

Yet it seems we are always waiting for the SSD that lives up to the promise of being superior to the HDD. I am ready to buy a new netbook as a companion machine….and I want the SSD for the theoretical promise of better battery life, more drop resistance, etc…..and will likely end up with the HDD again.

SSDs run cooler, though, and that’s a big consideration for me. When you cram lots of delicate electronics into a small space, you increase the risk of thermal damage.

(In fact, I’ve got a thermally wrecked hard 5400rpm disk that I had installed in my Eee 901, which has led me to order a RunCore SSD.)

Personally, I’ll take a little less capacity, a smarter MLC controller, and comparable performance to keep the system from running hot enough to scorch my lap.

I intentionally avoided all the SSD models this time when I bought my netbook. I don’t need a small, slow, under-performing jump drive sitting in my PC, I want a proper hard drive.

Maybe next year the speeds will get better, but I will wait until the capacities are half as good as HDDs and read/write speeds are better than equivalent HDDs.

When you’re dealing with a sub-$500 MSRP device, it doesn’t make sense installing a slow,small capacity drive that may cost as much as 50% of that $500. Traditional hard drives are much cheaper, offer bigger capacity and sometimes perform faster – that’s most likely why they are better suited to netbooks at the moment and pushing out first-gen SSD hardware.

For laptops and notebooks, however, I see SSD’s replacing hard drives altogether in the next 5-8 years. The 2.5 inch form factor has already brought 256GB SSD hardware, already matching half the capacity of the biggest 500GB platter-based notebook drives. As the technology becomes more developed and prices come down, SSD’s will dominate and push hard drives into the poor man’s price range.

@Gordon who said :

“…The SSD in my EEE PC failed after about 6 months…”

Same for me with the second and so slow SSD 8 Go of My EEE 900. Out now ! And what a pity for the 4 Go C: drive for original Windows XP. The system is unable to update to SP3 and I fight always beetween 100 and 200 Mo of free space. I use a SD card in rescue.

I regret a standard hard-drive, really !

One big problem is that they wear out. The SSD in my EEE PC failed after about 6 months (bad sectors in frequently-rewritten files).

I guess there are two netbook markets. One as a companion device where an SSD would suffice and one for the budget market (students, soccer mums etc) where it’s their primary machine. These people want to be able to store music and videos, download pictures from their digital camera. They want to have their itunes library with them. Even the people who have one as a companion device want to have a movie or two on the hard drive.

Gordon

The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) site has a lot of useful information about SSD technology.
http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi
Check it out.

I bought the original EEE and loved it. I still use it for its convenience as a quick web browser. BUT. I bought an Aspire One with XP because to be really useful as a throw in my bag and use anywhere PC I needed XP for the software. XP needs more than a small SSD. When a decent sized SSD is cheap enough for the original EEE I’ll put one in there, and probably XP too.

I really don’t care if the drive is an SSD or hard drive. I care it it is fast enough, if it is big enough, and if it works.

I think that capacity isn’t all that much of an issue for people who use a netbook as a secondary PC. However it seems that if you want a netbook with an SSD, you’re stuck with the lowest possible battery/RAM/screen specification. I see that the Eee’s avoided this trend and the Mini 1000 is also bucking it, but I really want a 6-cell Aspire One with an SDD for maximum battery life, and they just don’t make it.

Actually you’re wrong about no one saying this would happen. I remember when the Asus first came out, I turned to my dog and said: ‘These SSDs aren’t going to be very popular. In less than a year people are going to realise that they’re not good enough to replace a nice big HD.’ He nodded and went back to licking his balls. (If that’s not a sign of agreement, I don’t know what is).