It was only a matter of time before this happened. It is amazing news, but now I fear for my wallet's life. The 11" MBA sounds even more tempting now. Someone save me.
Now I only wish apple would offer the 1.6 processor in the $999 model
This is a awesome news. Not only does it destroy Apple's planned obsolescence, the Sandforce controller will boost performance as well. I think the 54 positive : 1 negative ratio speaks for itself.
Now that there are 3rd party options, it wouldn't be a bad thing if these SSD cards became an industry standard.
True.Downside:
Those of us who wanted the 2.13GHz CPU are locked in to purchasing the 256GB SSD. While I love the speediness of my Intel SSDs on my other installs and like what Sandforce is doing to push Intel, it's a lot less motivating to me when I already have 256GB onboard than if we were able to order 2.13GHz & only 64GB.![]()
Downside:
Those of us who wanted the 2.13GHz CPU are locked in to purchasing the 256GB SSD. While I love the speediness of my Intel SSDs on my other installs and like what Sandforce is doing to push Intel, it's a lot less motivating to me when I already have 256GB onboard than if we were able to order 2.13GHz & only 64GB.![]()
Why would you want to run you Mac off of a giant USB drive??
True.
But that 64GB SSD in the 11" MBA is going to be really space constrained.
At least the 256GB SSD has enough room for what most people need from a small laptop. And I'm sure large capacities will be available later, so maybe you can swap out that 256GB for a 512GB (or larger) at some point in the future, when the prices fall.
... The sans force based controllers are pricey, but very fast, and, do not need trim to keep the drive in tip-top shape....
what is this "trim" of which you speak?
In computing, a TRIM command allows an operating system to inform a solid-state drive which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally.
Why would you want to run you Mac off of a giant USB drive??
Wow. Some of the comments here just show a total lack of comprehension. It must be early or something...
Bravo!
Now let's see if someone can figure out how to expand the MacBook Air to 8GB of RAM (or even 6). An 8GB RAM/256GB SSD baby MacBook Air would be a very nice machine indeed.
Nice!
Is the SSD connector on the new MacBook Air SATA 3 Gbit/s, SATA 6 Gbit/s, or something else entirely? What is the maximum data transfer rate for whatever that hard drive connector is?
It matters if what you care about is the speed between the mobo and the internal SSD...It doesn't really matter, given the fastest you can transfer data to or from a MBA is limited by its ~30MB/sec USB ports.
At which point you're almost certainly going to be doing something that's CPU-bound anyway.It matters if what you care about is the speed between the mobo and the internal SSD...
Reread? I'm sorry to inform you but I would say half of your visitors don't even read the articles at all. They just read the headline only, look at the pictures, and then spout off uninformed nonsense.
The problem is that the screws on the bottom of the MBA case are non-standard. Not an insurmountable problem, but still a PITA. Once you get past those, it's smooth sailing.One thing I don't get - is it possible to simply 'open' the macbook air and swap the SSD? Doesn't the unibody enclosure prohibit that? Is it just unscrewing a couple of screws and replacing the SSD? Simple as that?