budget is $700 to $800 for 500GB SSD help!

friend of mine ready to pay almost $900 ! for single SSD capacity around 500GB



he wants the fastest he can get , he will install it in his Macbook Pro 2011 15 "



something fast and problem Free and reliable



how about this ?

OWC / Other World Computing Mercury Electra 6G OWCSSDEX6G480 B&H

or

Crucial Technology 512GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid CT512M4SSD2 B&H

 

I would go for the m4 without a doubt.

the owc sandforce based drive, will only fill the fast requirement.

He could look for the intel 320 with 600gb or the samsung 470 with 512gb

 

Crucial are probably the best option at the moment. As reliable as they come and super fast.

I ahve one in my Alienware and its amazing.

 

I also recommend the Crucial M4 512GB SSD.

 

In Lion would a 8GB RAM upgrade provide better VFM? Particularly if you sleep instead of shutdown and since the apps don't really close when you press the red cross. Wouldnt 8 gigs allow all the apps to remain active and thus allow us almost instantaneous opening and closing. A HDD would also take care of the large media copy scenario with better write speeds.
Or is my inference flawed?

 

An SSD upgrade, on a windows based laptop, (not sure about Mac but i'd imagine it would be the same) is probably the most effective upgrade you can make to a laptop. You wouldnt need to put the Mac to sleep as it boots in 15-20secs.

 

Why would i shut down my mac when i can put it to sleep? Shutting down takes time as does booting - closing the lid to sleep and opening to awake happens i a jiffy. And it lets me continue from exactly where i stopped with any bg tasks kicking in immediately. Booting is only required if i install something that drastic.

 

Thats the it, its so quick you dont need the sleep function. Well, that how i set it up on my Alienware rig. it preference i suppose. Also, everything installed on the SSD runs rapidly, like the OS is lightning quick.

 

The thing is mac is different from windows.

With Lion all apps remain live in the background even if you close them until the RAM runs out. With just 8 gigs of ram you could have almost all apps live in the background which gives you lightning fast speeds (under 1 sec to open a app). There would be negligible instances where the RAM runs out and the system needs to transfer data to the HDD. Considering the price of an SSD you could even get 16gb ram and still save some cash. That way you would probably never run out of RAM. You'll also get the faster write speeds of a HDD and lots more storage.

The time for a mac to wake up from sleep is less than a sec. No SSD can boot faster than that.

It's like having an ultra large cache of primary memory that is constantly filled with data most probable to be used which results in faster performance than an SSD.

 

fair do's.

 

No they dont remain ''active''. In OSX there are 4 kinds of memory

Active - being used right now
Inactive - dont remember
Wired - has info of some programs
Free - not used

Basically on my 8gb of ram mbp 13 I usually have more than half of that memory free, not used. does it give me more speed? Nope not at all, did the test, when I installed a 500gb HDD in my machine, the balance is that the experience lasted for 3 hours, the 120gb SSD returned to where it belonged.

What you have to be aware is the page outs, which is basically using the HDD as ram. Mine is usually around 0 bytes.

 

I agree with you. I prefer to shutdown my computers. I rarely use sleep on my Macs or Alienware. Of course, my mother never turns hers off. SSD make startup a breeze. They need to get the price down to $1/GB or less and I'd think we'd see greater adoption rates.

Cheers,