Netbooks: 8GB SSD vs 120GB HDD ??? Battery Life?

Spare-Flair

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So my parents want to buy a netbook for travelling. The most common options between all the netbooks (Asus EeePC, Dell, Acer Aspire One, etc.) are to choose either an 8GB Solid State Drive or a 120GB hard disk drive.

Now my parents don't need harddrive space for anything really but it would be nice to have. All they do is keep digital photos. I am thinking 8GB SDD would be enough and I like how SSD's are faster than HDDs.

My main concern is battery life. Do SSD drives have a significant benefit in terms of battery life over regular HDDs?
 
they're about even until you put a lot of strain on them.

aka for most uses they're about even


also....i don't know about them but my personal archive of every photo i've taken is reaching 40gb. and thats only since 2005.
 
If your parents/yourself decide to go with the solid state drive route and hurting for space, you can buy a 8-32gb SDHC card and stick it in the media port. There are mix reviews about using SDHC to run applications, but it'll be great for file storage.
 
Netbooks use really crappy SSDs. This means that they choke on XP, but are fine with linux. I am not sure if that is a concern or not. The aspire one has a SD card port in addition to the normal card reader slot for use as extra hard drive space. I have the 120gb hdd version of the One, but I got an 8gb sdhc card for like $20, and it's pretty awesome.
 
The SSD models will drive you insane. They're snappy for small files, but horrible for large transfers. The 8GB models will hold WinXP without too much trouble, but you'll definitely have to carry USB flash drives or SD cards around with you if you want to be able to store anything at all.
That said, the SSD models are probably more durable and generate less heat. They consume a bit less power, but the bigger concern for battery life will be whether you opt for the 6-cell or 3-cell.
 
A) The SSD on these netbooks are pretty low end drives, none of them are faster than standard laptop drives... They're actually noticeably slower. So if that's one of your main reasons for going SSD, think again. The AAO's SSD in particular is rather sluggish, and ASUS uses two different ones on the 901's (an average one for the OS, and a slower one for the other data partition, which can make installing programs or updates to the OS drive tricky). This is something that will obviously change in coming years as price of MLC SSD's drop and they replace the SLC drives commonly used right now... Could always aim for a SSD upgrade down the road.

B) The main reason to pick a SSD is simply durability... To an extent. They'll take more punishment than HDD's obviously, but their long-term lifespan might not be any better due to the nature of flash memory, 'specially if you're constantly filling it up and emptying it by off-loading photos. Might actually be worse in that case.

C) The difference in battery life between the SSD's these netbooks use and the laptop HDDs they use is usually negligible and tends to come down to usage patterns (and the battery itself) more than anything. That's why you might've found some conflicting reports on battery life and tests trying to compare the two...

For instance a SSD might use less power when idle (say, browsing, etc) than a HDD for instance, but if you're doing something sequential like watching a movie it'd be less noticeable. As mentioned, the biggest impact on battery life by far will be the choice of battery, ie 3 or 4-cell battery vs a 6-cell battery. A 3-cell tends to be good for 2.5 hours while a 6-cell's good for at 'least 5. The 120GB AAO's have a 3-cell while the 160GB's have a 6-cell I believe.

I was pretty gung-ho about getting a SSD myself when I was in the market for a netbook, but the more I researched it and looked into the specifics of the SSD's used on these things... The less apealing it became, and the more attractive the roomy 100GB+ drives became. The approach both Acer and ASUS took had drawbacks, adn the MSI Wind isn't even offered w/a SSD. The only upside is durability, which isn't really a big deal unless for w/e reason you know you'll be jostling your netbook a lot while it's powered up.
 
Netbooks use really crappy SSDs. This means that they choke on XP, but are fine with linux. I am not sure if that is a concern or not. The aspire one has a SD card port in addition to the normal card reader slot for use as extra hard drive space. I have the 120gb hdd version of the One, but I got an 8gb sdhc card for like $20, and it's pretty awesome.

I went the same path and got a $17 8gb SDHC from zzf when I ordered the logitech nano vx mouse. I use the 8gb to store music / back up files in case the HDD shits itself.
 
Thanks for the replies guys, ended up buying the Acer Aspire One 120GB HDD with 6 cell battery.

Gets about 6 hours but down to 5 because I had to turn power saving off on the 802.11G because it kept dropping when I tried to stream music, etc.
 
i own a 901 eee PC and the 4gb OS drive is a fast SLC nand Flash drive it gets around 35mb write and 45mb read

the 8gb MLC nand flash drive gets about 20mb write and 40mb read


the justification for this is that the 8gb is for storage which doesnt need the same speed of write


I think i am either going to replace the 8gb MLC drive with either a 1.8" 80g drive or an 8gb SLC drive from mydigitaalssd drive

http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/SP...00-901-901a-905-1000--80000846-1218608093.jsp
 
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