Less than 5% of laptop users use SSD?

I was told from a friend who works at a comp. shop that he read a report not long ago about how less than 5% of laptop owners in North America have a SSD in their laptop and are still using SATA (5400rpm for the most part) drives.

I know SSD is still new and very pricey but im surprised more havent made the switch. Once you go SSD you wont ever go back. I dont see any reason why anyone would want to.

 

answered your own question.

most people want a large amount of storage space for content (music, video, games) and the cost / GB of an SSD is extremely high. 2-3x more drive performance doesn't help most people when the cost is 10x.

 

The problem with SSD in laptops is that size + cost is still a limiting factor.

I think the best scenario is if you have to 2 HDDs, one SSD for OS/Programs, the other a conventional 7200rpm for media/storage, but only a few models have 2 drive bays... unless you remove the optical drive and get a caddy for your 2nd drive. I might do this with my next laptop

 

Most people (even on these forums) don't upgrade their laptops that often. My current Compal JFL92 (from February 2008) still has a 250GB @ 5400RPM hard disk. SSD's are nice, but the prices really need to drop below $1/GB -- it's not like with a desktop where you can easily have many drives and an 80GB boot drive does not affect the amount of storage space.

 

hey i got a question, out of all the drives does SSD consume the most battery power compared to say 5400 or 7200rpm drives?

 

Yep, it's honestly no surprise that SSD penetration into the consumer market is at that percentage. Your poll won't tell you much since this forum is but a very small and non-representative subset of the general population. As for power consumption, you can't really generalize - some SSDs will consume less power than HDDs, while others will consume more. Both have a range of power consumption values, to get a better answer, you'd have to compare a few specific models. At best, the generalization would be something like this: the Samsung, Indilinx, and Toshiba drives on average, tend to have lower power consumption relative to other SSDs and HDDs, while Marvell, Intel, and Sandforce tend to consume around the same or more than HDDs.

 

Some do some don't.
You just have to read the specs on the drive and look at benchmarks if possible.

Corsair C300 are good on battery life iirc.

 

This forum is probably not the best place to take on a poll on general laptop users.

Also, there are very few laptops out there that come with SSDs in the default config and most of people never really think of upgrading their notebook drive. Or if they do, they're looking for more space.

 

For typical laptop usage(i.e. 80% of the time they are sort of idle as far as disk activity is concern), SSD should result in longer battery life. The reason is that unlike HDD, there is no such state as 'spinning but doing nothing'(which consume more power than spindown). SSD only has 'spin down'(that is the idle) or 'do something' mode.

So HDD may actually consume less power when fully utilized(that is the thing that a benchmark can measure), it is usually not the case in real usage(that is something that cannot be benchmarked and can only be measured by individuals).

 

That's supposedly one of the pluses of SSDs. At idle, most 5400RPM drives draw say .5watts while a SSDs pull .01watt or something like that. While READ/WRITE speeds are in some cases just as high as 5400RPM drives the benefit is that they read right faster so they go back to the lower power state faster therefore still using less power.

The Sandforce controllers right now seem to pull the least amount of power. Here is a nice graph showing such usage:



OCZ Vertex 2 Review (120GB) | StorageReview.com

 

Why do I care how fast a hard drive is once its playing my content at a speed I am happy with and doesn't hurt my pocket? (average user response)

 

ssd's in everything I own

 

You are missing usable Windows in 15 seconds.

 

Dual hard drive setup (SSD + HDD).

 

And most people care about this, why?

 

Here are 3 from me:

1. Excessive price per MB

2. Small capacities (A storage media below 250-320GB nowadays can only be a temporary solution at least for me)

3. Using OSs not programmed for using SSDs shortens the life of the SSD immensely as the load is not spread but concentrated on particular part of the memory. I have HDDs that are over 4-5 years old and still work perfectly - once your SSD reaches this age - start a new thread and tell us how it is doing

Taking the above into account, I am sticking to a fast 7200RPM until at least 2 out of the 3 problems are solved.

P.s. Your statistic on top will not be accurate as the Thread's name is not really inviting HDD users to open it. Change it if you want more accurate results.

 

I don't think the poll is going to be very accurate for the simple fact that most of the people who come to this forum are well above the common consumer in regards to current technology and knowledge.

 

3 is incorrect; the load is spread by firmware and controllers on the SSD itself (wear-leveling) regardless of OS. The one thing that OS affects (presently) is TRIM, and that has more to do with the response and speed of the SSD (via write amplification) than load. I can't argue with your other 2 points, though (except to point out that there are 500+ GB SSDs... I should be having one come in soon, actually...).

 

huge response bias in the poll, agreed. also, sample bias.

much more likely to view the poll if you have an ssd. much more likely to respond to the poll if you have an sdd. much more likely that a user on this forum has an ssd vs. average user.

 

Went from a 120GB 7200RPM drive to a much faster 500GB 5400RPM drive a couple weeks back.

I would love an SSD, but not until I can get a >500GB drive for less than $300.

 

Technically correct(as there are NAND oriented file system in linux) but no longer a concern for us due to the wear leveling done by the SSD controller.

Basically, the OS theorectically knows more about the pattern of the file and may be able to do a better job in wear leveling. The reality is, it doesn't matter.

Openwrt use this NAND oriented file system(well used to, not sure now) and the stuttering is so bad, making it slower than a usb thumb when I write something to it

 

Couldn't agree more. And knowing that SSDs will get much cheaper quite soon, I wouldn't be able to sleep nights knowing I spent a huge amount of money on something that would cost nearly the half just couple of months later... just because I couldn't wait

No thanks - 500GB storage with reasonable speed for below 100 bucks - that's a better investment at the time being if you ask me.

 

Doesn't surprise me at all. These things are still very expensive, and there's few laptops where they come standard, rather than as a (pricey) option. Viewed rationally, the return on investment on this expense is questionable for most people, to say the least. Definitely for the home user, the only tangible benefit is feeling good about the "snappy" response of your computer. A few seconds gained in the course of a day is worth nothing.

I did, on my M4500. Too many issues, too little storage. Simply not worth it. And this was for business usage, mind you.

You don't get around much, it seems. There's plenty of reasons to prefer a mechanical drive over an SSD.

Couldn't have said it any better.

 

Exactly. I say $300 because I have several 500GB and 1TB drives that I've purchased for $200-$250 (on sale, a couple years ago) and I do not regret it. Most of them have 11,000-15,000 hours on them and the first one is just starting to fail.

It will be an awesome day when I can go out and buy an affordable 2TB SSD to store my data on and not have to worry as much about losing it. Although, currently, there isn't a very good way to recover data off an SSD if it does happen to die (without sending it in to a data recovery service for $$$).

They are expensive, they are still a very new technology and lots of people don't trust new technologies until they fully understand them. Plus they still are fending off a bad rep as SSD's, when they were still very new, (supposedly) had a high failure rate. Plus you have to consider putting an SSD in a desktop is a pain for the average non-computer savvy person as they have to get a converter to go from 3.5" to 2.5" hard drives in order to properly mount it in their case. Plus, there has been lots of press about having TRIM support and Garbage collection in your OS and the average computer user is not willing to learn or understand these concepts yet and is only going to be more pressed to stay away from purchasing an SSD.

Plus, as I mentioned above, if an SSD does die on you, you're pretty much SOL whereas with a regular hard drive there are several things you can still do to try and recover data without spending $$$ on a data recovery service.

 

Technology is always like that though. Things generally become cheaper in the future, just think 10-20 years ago, how much hard drives cost and how fast they changed every year based on size and cost. Investment is relative, some people don't require storage and speed can vastly increase productivity, hence saving them money and being a great investment. But for the average consumer, the SSD is currently not a great investment since most won't utilize the benefits of one.

 

The 2x speed increase won't increase productivity for power users. SSDs may be a good investment in certain mobile applications where the machine is liable to be bounced around a bit, which can easily destroy a normal hard drive.

But since the cost is so great (10x) - even for power users, it's better to just set up a RAID array.

The only application where it could be better given the cost is due to the durability, not performance. It doesn't give increased productivity / cost or anything, that's a pipe dream.

 

Back in I think November, I read a report that stated SSD penetration in the notebook market was 1.7% at the start of 2010 and was estimated to hit 2.3% by the end of 2010. It's likely that about 1% of notebooks have SSDs.

SSDs have their advantages and disadvantages; you pay your money and you take your choice.

 

And they bloody well shouldn't. The fact that there is a need to pay any attention at all to this kind of crap is in fact testament to the immaturity of the technology. For my hard drives, I don't need to know anything about how the drive re-assigns sectors in case of media issues, or what to do in order to get an optimal sequencing of read or write commands; the controller does that for me, and I don't need to spend a second of my time worrying about such stuff. I can expect an SSD controller to do this kind of work for me as well. Until the time when that is the case, we cannot consider this a mature technology.

In parentheses, I always smirk when I read posts of these SSD users who are so happy that their OS now boots 10 seconds faster, but, apparently, then may spend many hours a week nervously running benchmarks to see if their write speed has deteriorated yet, researching ways to make sure it hasn't, etc., etc...

 

As always, it depends. I changed my work laptop to SSD and the build speed of my visual studio solutions gain quite noticeably. This means I can try out more builds which does increase productivity.

And since it is work and not downloading video or gaming the size difference doesn't matter much. Talking about 200 (SSD) vs 80(Scorpio Black). A 120 bucks difference that is not even the hourly rate we charge our customers

 

Of course. I'm not talking about a period of 10 years though. Fact is - memory chips are actually much cheaper than their price in the store. Manufacturers just profit from the new technology called SSD... BUT this is still memory chips what they are selling.

And should I tell you something - I paid around 30 euros for a 4GB USB stick an year ago... - now it costs 5 euros... think about the difference in just 12 months.

Not saying it is going to be the same difference with SSD, but big enough to be a reason to sit down and wait quietly untill SSD technology becomes better and much cheaper.

Buying a SSD now means you will NEVER be able to sell it in half an year or an year, unless you want to have lunch in Mc'Donalds with the money.

It is just a luxury, that's what it is. Not worth it (yet).

 

Until I can upgrade to 256 GB SSD for $200, I'm not upgrading.

 

Time for you to buy an SSD then. Just install Windows 7 or a recent version of Linux to it, and everything is taken care of. The only thing you might have to worry about is if TRIM is enabled, but that's along the same lines of wondering if DMA is enabled on a spinning drive. It's definitely no more complex than a "normal" drive.

Meanwhile, I like my much faster booting, faster program startup, faster pretty much everything that has happened because of my SSD. Almost everything on your computer is bottlenecked by the drive to some extent. And I don't benchmark mine, well, ever. It just works. I think the majority of people with SSDs are that way. It's just a few who get caught up in it and post a lot about it. A self-selection bias in your observations.

Go ahead and keep with a spinning drive because it's "good enough" or has a much lower cost/GB, or whatever. But there's no longer any technical reason to not run an SSD. It's all economic.

 

Unfortunately, that was not my experience on my M4500, which would reliably bluescreen after waking up from sleep with the SSD. After updating the firmware it bluescreend in a slightly different way, so out it went... Plus, I really wanted a 500GB drive in there, also not very realistic right now.

Nope, that's not the case at all. You know, some people actually do use their CPU every now and then Seriously, yes, program startup time is a little faster, and reading and writing large files is as well, but in my usage, we are talking about fractions of a second of reading or writing data to the permanent storage medium, interspersed with minutes of not doing any significant I/O. When all is said and done that means that the objective gain in performance from an SSD is in the tiny fractions of a single percent. Other than the feel-good factor, that means there is no real benefit. Plus, keep in mind that on my main machine I am running dual Momentus XT drives in a RAID array. This machine comes pretty darn close to your standard SSD-equipped laptop. Boots in 35seconds with around 90 processes loaded at login, and 2gigs of memory used. And, try to put your SSDs in RAID (which you still might want to do for mirroring), and you're in trouble, with TRIM support gone...

Well, yeah, having 1TB of SSD storage does get kind of pricey...

 

My original point that Pirx was commenting on was not that theres a technical reason you shouldn't run an SSD, but more that there is a perceived technical reason not to run an SSD. That the average computer owner see's blips here and there in the news or their newspaper about SSD's not being reliable or SSD's slowly degrading over time, or certain OS's not having TRIM support.

Of course those of us that are more tech savvy know these things not to be true anymore, but unfortunately the media doesn't bother to update the general public on these kinds of things.

 

That REALLY depends on the quality of the SSD you installed. A while back we installed a cheap SSD in a customers system as they really wanted an SSD. Well the SSD he chose was not much (if at all) faster than the regular hard drive he had in it previously. Had I not known there was an SSD in his system, I wouldn't have noticed while using it.

That being said, with a quality SSD, you will see seconds shaved off often. 10-15 seconds shaved off boot times. Seconds shaved off loading games, photoshop, Microsoft Office, etc. Seconds (maybe even minutes) shaved off installing programs and games. SSD's don't produce any noticeable amount of heat plus they don't use as much power so you get more battery life. There are tons of benefits to having an SSD.

HDD's have been the bottleneck for a while now and SSD's are alleviating that issue.

 

May I ask what SSD was that ? I only know Sandforce has this issue and would love to know what other brands also behave like this so I can rule them out, or at least test that before I buy next time.

 

And how often do I boot? Depending on scenario, this may not matter one wit, like if I boot once a month, on average.

All of the Office apps load in significantly less than a second on this machine, so nothing significant to shave off there. Also, application loading time depends on more than just disk transfer rate. Suffice it to say that in many cases, application load time with an SSD isn't that much faster than with a mechanical drive. Even with a game, let's just say that I save as much as ten seconds loading a game that I play for half an hour. That's about half a percent. So, does that matter? I'm not saying it doesn't, but I am saying it depends.

I don't care; I hardly ever use my laptops on battery, and if I do, the battery life I have is plenty.

Again, on a machine such as my M6400, that issue pretty much doesn't exist.

 

Crucial C300. I had tried just about everything under the sun to try and fix the problem, before I gave up for good. Really not worth my time...

 

many thanks and that was also the reason why I have reservations on these new brands.

 

Well OCZ had a 1 TB 3.5" SSD for the low suggest price of 3000 dollars...

Then again IBM had a 2 TB enterprise SSD for 50 grand....that or a shiny new BMW 5 series!

 

most people never upgrade anything in their pc except when it dies. most don't KNOW ssds (they do know "harddrive", and gigabytes and terabytes).

there aren't much ordinary-customer laptops sold with ssd by default. only the new macbook air comes to mind (And some netbooks had them).

 

a typical end user needs to know more about a hdd than about an ssd: he should need to know about defragmentation (even while it's by now scheduled).

if you buy a good ssd (intel *cough*), you can pop it in, install the os, and use it. and never care about anything. it just works.

you had a different experience in your case. but i've had tons of (different) ssds and never had to do anything besides popping in, and using it. i of course tried out thing for the curiousity, but i never had to.

 

My biggest problem with SSDs is not the price, but rather the fact that for that price you're getting a device that is guaranteed (yes, guaranteed) to stop working after some set amount of usage. Until that amount has proven to be so ridiculously high as not to matter (through real-life tests, not theoretical math) I'll stick to mechanical disks.

 

Heh, so what would you rather have: Save a tenth of a second here and there, or drive that shiny new BMW? Hmm, let me think about that one for a second...

 

the theoretical math is based on real-life tests on flash over the last 10, 20 years of it's existence. and you know what? i prefer to have a known endtime than being able to kill my hdd every second just because i accidentally pushed my laptop a bit.

what's wrong with knowing when it ends? better than not knowing it, but knowing it can be anytime, even today.

you will appreciate the fact that you can't physically kill an ssd once you lost important data that was on a hdd that got killed because you moved your pc 4mm accidentally.

 

the ssd.

and this is not sarcasm.

 

And what do you do if the SSD does fail unexpectedly, what electronics are allowed to and do, especially in their early stage of development, in which SSDs still are?
Then you would wish you had a HDD to restore your data

But the discussion is generally endless - the truth is - both the mechanical HDDs and SSDs do have their advantages & disadvantages!

Main disadvantage of HDD-s - the speed
Main disadvantage of SSD-s - the very high price per MB

My personal opinion is that SSDs are (still) a wrong investment for the average human being, who goes to work Mo-Fri.

If I wasn't to care about money at all - I would certainly be using a high capacity SSD even if it was to cost 2000 bucks, knowing that I will most likely buy a new laptop in the next couple of months anyway... or can always take one of my other 10 notebooks collecting dust at home or even hire an engineer to take care and worry about my appliances.

It's like asking "Why don't you drive a sports BMW, don't you like it!?"
- Yes, especially if I could have a few cars, as it is uncomfortable on bad roads!
- No, I wouldn't buy it though (even if I have the money), because I'd rather invest this amount elsewhere and don't necessarily need a sports car, especially at this price and considering it has disadvantages too.

 

Price of Hdd > HDD space > HDD speed

 

One thing to consider with an SSD for compact notebooks or netbooks is battery life. They can offer a significant improvement in battery life. Not to mention making the lighter and smaller laptops more robust. With Intel it improved my battery life in my 12" netbook from 4 hrs to over 5 hrs. In my M11x it improved from about 6.5 hrs to 9 hrs.

So it's not only space or speed, it's also battery life. That may not be importantif you have a DTR but if you have a small and light machine, it can make a world of difference. When looking at the specs or reviews on power consumption, of most importance is "idle" power since your drive will be doing just that 90% of the time.

See here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-470-sandforce-best-ssd,2783-16.html

 

I like storage space, reboot my computers only to install windows updates, and have enough RAM so that I can have multiple programs all fully loaded into memory at all times, including plenty of cache space. An SSD would just be a waste of money for me.

And a big LOL at anyone who has an SSD but only 4GB of RAM.