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Technician Said that an SSD Wouldn't Make a Difference

Was the technician right?

  • No way... what was he smoking?

    Votes: 50 100.0%

  • Of course he's right. Don't question your superiors!

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    50
E

Epsilon88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 26, 2009
327
0
I went to a local computer shop yesterday and inquired about replacing the 120 gb hard drive on my 3 year old Macbook Pro w/ an SSD of some type. The technician, owner of the shop, said that older Apples are designed so that they will only run at a certain speed. So even if I got an SSD, it would make no difference.

Is this true?
 
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I'm sure there would be a bottleneck somewhere at some point, whether it be an older, slower processor or whatever, but, to say that it would make NO difference? Nah, cmon man.
 
Absolutely not, the SSD will make a huge difference, even though it is not a newer computer. I've installed SSDs in non-unibody MacBook Pros and there is an immediate difference in speed. Yes, some of the faster SSDs are bottlenecked by having to use the old SATA bus. (Probably what he was referring to) But there will still be a large speed jump when installing a SSD.
 
hahaha… God i hate how people think Macs operate completely different from other computers and put them in their own 'slower' & 'not compatible' class. and from calling it just an "Apple" would probably give away that he doesnt know what hes talking about. maybe he was talking about the SATA interface in some MacBook Pros only being 1.5 Gb/s (187 MB/s), your MacBook Pro should be 3.0 Gb/s, which SSDs are faster than, but notebook hard drives are not.

an SSD will make the boot time faster and increase the speed of launching applications and working with files A LOT faster.
 
I'm not sure how fast the interface is on a 3 year old MacBook Pro, but I would guess that it's 1.5Gb/s. SSDs are much faster than that, and although you probably will have some performance difference, your system is bottlenecked.

Then there's the discussion about how OSX doesn't have TRIM support and the debate about whether it's even worth having an SSD with OSX. I don't have any experience with this, but I'm sure others can clear this up.
 
He's right about the limitations of older Macs, but it should be a noticeable increase nonetheless.
 
Well, I have installed an Intel X-25 SSD on my MacBook Pro (mid 2007).

It´s the biggest upgrade you´ll able to do, programs open in seconds, boot time is about 25 seconds. And it´s much quieter and cooler.

Because older macs are 1.5 gbits SATA, you won´t need the newest and fastest SSD on the market. Go for a cheap SSD like Kingston or Vertex. You won´t be dissapointed.
 
Quite agree, it`s one of the biggest speed increases you can get for most "normal" users.
It will make a bigger difference than a faster processor to the vast majority of people because it speeds up pretty much everything that accessess the hard drive (which is pretty much everything).
 
winninganthem said:
Then there's the discussion about how OSX doesn't have TRIM support and the debate about whether it's even worth having an SSD with OSX. I don't have any experience with this, but I'm sure others can clear this up.
Click to expand...

norsemen said:
Because older macs are 1.5 gbits SATA, you won´t need the newest and fastest SSD on the market. Go for a cheap SSD like Kingston or Vertex. You won´t be dissapointed.
Click to expand...
If you get a decent SSD with sufficient overprovisioning (7GB will work), then you don't have to worry about TRIM support. Check out OWC. They also have an SSD vs. HDD shootout link on that page.

Epsilon88 said:
The technician, owner of the shop, said that older Apples are designed so that they will only run at a certain speed. So even if I got an SSD, it would make no difference.
Click to expand...
The way that guy makes stuff up on the fly, he must have worked in the residential construction field before the bust.
 
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