Macbook Air?
- Thread starter BeerNuts
- Start date
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I stopped building my own computers probably 5 years ago and only pay passing attention to hard ware stuff anymore but I do know how much of a boost SSD gives by playing on a buddy's system.
Can I swap an SSD for my existing HDD (non SATA) drive or does SSD have a different interface/bus that would require a new motherboard?
</hijack>
I stopped building my own computers probably 5 years ago and only pay passing attention to hard ware stuff anymore but I do know how much of a boost SSD gives by playing on a buddy's system.
Can I swap an SSD for my existing HDD (non SATA) drive or does SSD have a different interface/bus that would require a new motherboard?
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I've only got a 13" and work on it almost exclusively with no issues, in fact my last laptop was 12.2" and the one before 13". Different strokes...
While they are finite they won't die before that shiny new Macbook Air is old and outdated. The Samnsung SSD in it is good for 100,000 write cycles to every cell in the device. Meaning if you filled the drive up, and erased it over and over, every hour of every day it would take years to fail. Regular spinning drives tend to get flaky after 3-5 years, so I don't see how it's any different.
It's just a standard SATA connector. Plug 'n Play. There are a few companies that sell PATA (IDE) SSDs but they are expensive and you don't really gain much because you start to hit the ceiling on IDE.
Not to mention, most SSDs have their controller evenly disperse the data so that it ages evenly.
Most all SSDs currently support 10 year warranties and can handle over 80TBs of data written to them during their life. I like looking at Sandisk's SSDs as the standard since they have been doing this for years with their flash drives. Their SSD G4 can handle over 160 TB written to it over it's life.
Nearly all the SSDs on the market do this now. Here's a good article on the Macbook Air SSD & the failure debate.
The SSD failure debate | ZDNet
Comon mang, you know damn well Normal platter HDD's have a finite number of read and writes as well, not to mention the fact that they are spinning on ball bearings which tend to luck the fuck up every time you are trying to transfer you're 2TB porn collection, and have moving parts which is just a recipe for disaster.
SSD/Flash memory is the future.. No.. Doubt.. About.. It.
And you can run and tell that... Homeboy.
Ok so you guys that bought one spill the details.
What I really want is battery and heat details. My MVP lasts an hour with a brand new battery and gets so hot I can no longer use it on my lap or even hold it. Also how do the graphics hold up in games, someone must have put steam on one by now. Not like it's made for gaming but if you needed a break can it atleast run anything? Tf2? Sc2?
The fucking Mac store is a hour from my place so I can't go mess with one.
What I really want is battery and heat details. My MVP lasts an hour with a brand new battery and gets so hot I can no longer use it on my lap or even hold it. Also how do the graphics hold up in games, someone must have put steam on one by now. Not like it's made for gaming but if you needed a break can it atleast run anything? Tf2? Sc2?
The fucking Mac store is a hour from my place so I can't go mess with one.
Mine's leaving Beijing tonight, should be here by Thurs/Friday. I don't game, but I use photoshop all the time so I can run it through those tests a bit. I like HD porn too, will check back on that as well.
Ended up getting the 1.86 proc but 4 gigs of ram and 256gig HD. There's a good review over at anandtech that covers the majority of the details.
7 hours of battery life and this power combo should be perfect for my needs, I don't do video so photoshop should be fine and I just do web coding and some botting so I don't think I'll be able to max the thing out. Pretty excited about having terminal without having to boot a VM like in win7
I finally made it to the mac store today and I was really impressed with the 1.8/2gb 13" air.
I was kinda limited but I was able to run minecraft in browser for a while on max detail which did great. I couldn't get the client to run right though due to java issues. I then went on quakelive for 10mins to try and see if I could heat it up a bit.
So while I was playing quakelive fullscreen I also had hulu playing 30rock, word, keynote and itunes open. Nothing slowed down the game at all which is to be expected of a new computer. But also after 10mins of this the damn thing never let off more than idle heat. I heard no fans kick on and it was cool the touch the whole time.
Applications also opened CRAZY fast due to the ssd. Word, itunes, keynote all of them took 1-2 seconds tops. On my MBP with a 7200rpm itunes and word both take a good 10 seconds to open.
So really it comes down to heat and size, as a equal ssd ($700) could take a MBP to faster speeds than the air. Also if anyone is curious the MBA score was 169 on xBench my MBP just scored 152.
I was kinda limited but I was able to run minecraft in browser for a while on max detail which did great. I couldn't get the client to run right though due to java issues. I then went on quakelive for 10mins to try and see if I could heat it up a bit.
So while I was playing quakelive fullscreen I also had hulu playing 30rock, word, keynote and itunes open. Nothing slowed down the game at all which is to be expected of a new computer. But also after 10mins of this the damn thing never let off more than idle heat. I heard no fans kick on and it was cool the touch the whole time.
Applications also opened CRAZY fast due to the ssd. Word, itunes, keynote all of them took 1-2 seconds tops. On my MBP with a 7200rpm itunes and word both take a good 10 seconds to open.
So really it comes down to heat and size, as a equal ssd ($700) could take a MBP to faster speeds than the air. Also if anyone is curious the MBA score was 169 on xBench my MBP just scored 152.
I'm on mine right now, it's fucking heaven. it's the perfect size/weight/speed for what I do, which is a lot of web dev, automation, and photoshop/design stuff
I bought the 11.6" and the weight/speed/screen quality is pretty unbelievable. I keep a netbook around for travel purposes and will sell that because the MBA gives me far better usability at the same weight. The netbook has a smaller screen and is harder to type on.
OTOH, installing stuff without a CD drive can be a major pain. An external cd drive I bought for this purpose wasn't doing the job. I had a shit load of problems setting up Boot Camp for running Windows and wasted a whole day working problems out.
I am selling my white Macbook and the netbook that was replaced by this one, so if anybody's interested (US) send me a pm.
OTOH, installing stuff without a CD drive can be a major pain. An external cd drive I bought for this purpose wasn't doing the job. I had a shit load of problems setting up Boot Camp for running Windows and wasted a whole day working problems out.
I am selling my white Macbook and the netbook that was replaced by this one, so if anybody's interested (US) send me a pm.
Down to 3. Wanted an SSD and backlit keyword, so the pickin' were slim.
Surprising to see that if you add the 256GB SSD to the HP or Dell the prices come in higher than the MBA.
I'll go check out the MBA before deciding, but it will have to be damn impressive to give up DVD-RW, HDMI out, and all the software I have already.
Surprising to see that if you add the 256GB SSD to the HP or Dell the prices come in higher than the MBA.
I'll go check out the MBA before deciding, but it will have to be damn impressive to give up DVD-RW, HDMI out, and all the software I have already.
So I checked them out. MBA was thin, but other than that - not super impressive to me.
Now I'm leaning towards a smaller machine. Since this is mainly for travel - small is the real goal.
Gonna order an Alienware MX11x with SSD, already has a backlit keyboard. Anyone have any opinions?
Now I'm leaning towards a smaller machine. Since this is mainly for travel - small is the real goal.
Gonna order an Alienware MX11x with SSD, already has a backlit keyboard. Anyone have any opinions?
I will never order Alienware again.
Back in 2005 I ordered a $4,000+ laptop from them. I got it towards the end of August. By December it started smoking and the motherboard was fried. That was the worst smell I have ever smelt.
Now, I take excellent care of anything I own, and when I sent it off - it was in pristine condition. When I got it back, the case was all scratched up, they even chipped the Alien head. When I opened it up to turn it on, there was a thick wood chip sitting on top of the keyboard and pressing into the screen. Who does that?
Since I got it back, it would crash randomly, even when I was just browsing through my files with nothing else open. About 4 months since it got returned, I started getting a dead pixel line vertically... right where that wood chip was.
They of course refused to acknowledge what they did, even after I took pictures of the before and after. I searched their forums when I got it back and a couple others were having the same issue. Their threads magically disappeared after a day though.
Want to know something funny? March of 2006 I bought a refurbished $400 laptop from Tiger Direct and it was out performing the Alienware, even when the Alienware wasn't crashing every couple of hours.
Moral of the story? Don't buy overpriced crap from people.