Better battery life and speed benefits using SSD on 2008 unibody MBP?

[MrXiro]

I have the 500gb Momentus XT Hybrid SSD+HDD drive... the HDD itself is a 7200rpm drive in my late 2008 Unibody MBP.

It loads things really quickly so long as it has been opened recently... usually 1 bounce... I'd say my CS4 Photoshop loads in 2 seconds as long as it has been opened once after a restart. A restart takes 45 seconds from start up sound to having all my desktop apps loaded.
But I found that I only get about 3 hours of battery life on a full charge when I am just surfing and that is with the brightness turned WAY down. I am curious how much and even if an SSD would be A. faster and B. conserve more power.

I think I'm really just having Macbook Air envy. It seems to be as zippy as any 2.5 ghz+ Macbooks but with half the processor speed. So I was wondering if an SSD would give me all the benefits of a Macbook Air (5+ hr wifi surfing battery life, super zippy program/page loading) but the processing power and speed of a MBP if it was put into one.

Anyone ever use both the Momentus XT and an SSD and can give me real life comparisons? Is it worth the upgrade?

Thanks.

 

[alust2013]

I'm not sure about the speed improvements. I imagine you would see some, however I wouldn't expect miracles with battery life. In the end, SSDs actually do use more power than you would think, plus they use a bit more CPU than standard HDDs do. That said, the XT is known to be power hungry, so I would expect at least a noticeable improvement of maybe an 30-45min.

 

[Blue Sun]

The SSD will both give you a longer battery life and make everything else run much faster.

EDIT: This might give you some indication.

 

[MrXiro]

Wow... so I still might not see 5 hours of real time battery life eh? :-/

 

[TheHoff]

What do you get now for battery life?

In my 2008 (first gen Unibody 15") I would be lucky to get 2.5 hours, usually more like 2.25 even with a new battery. That is the main reason I just got a new 2011 model. I'm getting 6.5 hours now with the same usage.

An SSD in a 2008 will never get you close to the new gen of batteries. It might get you an extra 10 or 15 minutes. The new (non-removable) batteries are much bigger and more efficient.

 

[MrXiro]

What do you get now for battery life?

In my 2008 (first gen Unibody 15") I would be lucky to get 2.5 hours, usually more like 2.25 even with a new battery. That is the main reason I just got a new 2011 model. I'm getting 6.5 hours now with the same usage.

An SSD in a 2008 will never get you close to the new gen of batteries. It might get you an extra 10 or 15 minutes. The new (non-removable) batteries are much bigger and more efficient.

Yeah I'm getting about 2.5 to 3 hours with my brightness turned way down and on the 9400m... drats... didn't know that my MBP was that energy deficient compared to the newer models... maybe I should Up/down grade to the low end 13 inch... it seems to be as powerful as the 2010 top end MBP 15 inch which for sure is better than mine.

Wish the screen res was better...

 

[MrXiro]

Has anyone used both on the same machine?