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jmy2469

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 10, 2010
79
0
Palm Harbor, FL
New to the entire mbp scene. Just about ready to place an order. Just wanted to find out what the benefits of having a ssd drive are? How about drawbacks? Looking to purchase a 17" model which is going to be a desktop replacement for me. Would it be cheaper for me to do this myself or just order it when I order my new mbp? Thanks for the info.
 
Also depends on where you are getting the MBP.

If you're ordering from Apple than it would be cheaper to just pay them $100 for the upgrade. A comparable SSD elsewhere would run you $200+

If you get the MBP on somewhere like Amazon, you'll save on the price of MBP as well as possibly tax depending on your state. In that case SSD may be cheaper to do yourself, but as far as I know only the SSD directly from Apple supports Trim.

I personally got MBP off Amazon and got SSD elsewhere.
 
Disadvantages: Price, Space
Advantage: Incredible speed improvement.

I had an iMac 27" with the Apple branded SSD (Not the fastest SSD drive in the market, for sure) and the performance are incredible!

No others component upgrade give this speed improvement.
 
Dont forget noise - SSD's are completely silent. Also no moving parts = less heat
 
Also depends on where you are getting the MBP.

If you're ordering from Apple than it would be cheaper to just pay them $100 for the upgrade. A comparable SSD elsewhere would run you $200+

If you get the MBP on somewhere like Amazon, you'll save on the price of MBP as well as possibly tax depending on your state. In that case SSD may be cheaper to do yourself, but as far as I know only the SSD directly from Apple supports Trim.

I personally got MBP off Amazon and got SSD elsewhere.

Just to make it clear:
If you are not a US citizen, the premium charged by Apple on SSDs are more in the range of $400-600 USD. In that case you may want to consider a 3rd party SSD, like the rest of us 2nd rate citizens of the world.

The speed upgrade by a SSD is 2nd to none however, and well worth it.
(I have a MBA with a 128GB Apple SSD, and a MBP with a 256GB Crusial C300 SSD)
 
Not sure why it would be cheaper to let Apple do the upgrade. What you get for that price is less than what you could do yourself in a snap.

If you want, I could do a small review on daily usage of the coming Vertex 3, which supposedly should be the fastest thing around (atleast until OWC and Crucial spit something new out in a couple of months). I'll be getting it in 2 weeks time, and very much looking forward to it.

The price I'm paying for the Vertex 3 is $65 more than the Apple SSD of the same size (256gb). The speed difference is significantly more...

The advantages? Well... I'm not hardware buff, but I did read a lot before making up my mind.
Depending on what your needs are, you should find out what the specific drive is good at. I absolutely need one that is good at both random and sequential read/writing. That's why I chose Vertex 3.
If I only needed random writing I would choose something else (cheaper).

Also note the talks around how some drives seem to be causing problems for some machines. I noticed a lot of Intel 510 talk, and that coupled with its extremely inferior speed I chose not to even take an interest in it.

What you'll be getting is speed, less heat and no moving parts... moving parts are bad :p

What will you be using your computer for?
 
Another advantage of the current Apple SSDs are that they support TRIM and are covered by Applecare if you get it.
 
The price I'm paying for the Vertex 3 is $65 more than the Apple SSD of the same size (256gb). The speed difference is significantly more...

The advantages? Well... I'm not hardware buff, but I did read a lot before making up my mind.
Depending on what your needs are, you should find out what the specific drive is good at. I absolutely need one that is good at both random and sequential read/writing. That's why I chose Vertex 3.

im so envious... really want a V3
but will wait a month or 2 when extensive testing a of MBP+V3s have been performed

also hopefully trim by 10.6.7 / lion for all 3rd pary ssd

ps may i inquire where and and how much you ordered u're vertex 3?
its 430GBP here (approx $695 USD)
 
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