New MBA disappointment

[nilk]

SSD performance vs HDD performance is definitely not subjective, there is a measurable difference, and the difference is huge.

My subjective experience was that I was blown away when I started using a SSD at work. The most jaw-dropping was when I started up my Windows 7 VM in VMWare Fusion and was like "wait, it's already booted up?" That said, like any performance increase, once you get used to SSDs it doesn't feel that fast any more, it just feels normal (and HDDs feel extra slow). And some apps are so slow (or are more CPU/GPU bound) that not even an SSD will help them feel fast (e.g. Eclipse 4.2). And of course SSDs only help when you are doing things that involve disk I/O, which you may not do enough of to make a difference in your day-to-day usage, so you may not see the difference as often in that case.

When you were testing with your iMac, did you test app startup after a reboot, or did you shutdown the apps and start them again? You have 16GB of RAM in your iMac, there is a good chance the file cache is helping with app startup performance.

 

[Amplelink]

SSD performance vs HDD performance is definitely not subjective, there is a measurable difference, and the difference is huge.

My subjective experience was that I was blown away when I started using a SSD at work. The most jaw-dropping was when I started up my Windows 7 VM in VMWare Fusion and was like "wait, it's already booted up?" That said, like any performance increase, once you get used to SSDs it doesn't feel that fast any more, it just feels normal (and HDDs feel extra slow). And some apps are so slow (or are more CPU/GPU bound) that not even an SSD will help them feel fast (e.g. Eclipse 4.2). And of course SSDs only help when you are doing things that involve disk I/O, which you may not do enough of to make a difference in your day-to-day usage, so you may not see the difference as often in that case.

When you were testing with your iMac, did you test app startup after a reboot, or did you shutdown the apps and start them again? You have 16GB of RAM in your iMac, there is a good chance the file cache is helping with app startup performance.

I completely agree. OP clearly is not doing any side by side comparisons. There is a very significant "real world" difference in responsiveness between SSDs and HDDs. Apps still take time to open, because that's just the nature of apps, but lots of other operations requiring reading from the SSD are dramatically faster.

 

[Dr. McKay]

OP clearly is not doing any side by side comparisons.

No, I'm not, told you that. I didn't have any personal hands-on experience with SSD's so played around a bit with a MBA at a store and wasn't too impressed. No more, no less.
The MBA wasn't slow at all, it just wasn't lightning fast as I had expected, based on the idea I had about SSD because of all the hype around solid state drives and the 'must buy' label everyone's putting on it.

Yes, SSD is faster than HDD, but I don't believe that, in my case, the amount of increase in speed justifies the price tag...

 

[kodeman53]

Nope, nothing wrong with his post. Yours and quite a lot here are nonsense...

Careful. If you read any of techn0lady's other posts you'll find she insults people who disagree with her and the mods don't care.

 

[whtrbt7]

I can see where the OP is coming from. The initial reaction to SSD is normally not enough of a change when you're just using most small apps, web-browsing, and most basic functions. Unless you're a "power" user, the speed of an SSD won't really kick in to how you're experiencing the OS. When you're actively using disk functions every day and you're counting down the minutes, hours, and days throughout the year, the SSD starts to really count. I transfer and import lots of photos every single day as my profession so I'm literally counting the milliseconds for tasks to be done. The inclusion of the SSD in an MBA for me is incredibly valuable. Yes, I notice that some apps load faster and run faster but that's because I'm counting the milliseconds that add up over the year and find how much time I'm wasting and where I could be spending that time elsewhere. For a casual user, the SSD may not be enough of a clincher for a purchase but since MBA prices are pretty low and the SSD is included, it's a good way to get fast storage easily. The MBA is about the smallest and one of the best designed notebooks on the market today. The SSD is a part of that design. If you can't appreciate the power savings, time savings, and processing savings, there are always netbooks.

 

[maxosx]

Why does Apple rape on their prices? When looking at the base rMBP.

+$200 for 128GB more
+$500 for 384GB more
+$900 for 640GB more

Apple has a lot of marketing time and money into getting people to believe they are selling "magical & revolutionary" products.

As such they can charge bleeding edge mark up to make Apple one of the richest companies on planet earth.

If history reveals anything, it's that the haters will come and attack this message any minute now....

 

[racer1441]

Just saying it seems slower than I thought it would be is a worthless statement. Numbers, facts. You can test and see the difference. Upgraded my mini hard drive to ssd. Went from 60mb/s to 200.

 

[filmbuff]

I was pretty shocked by the speed of the SSD when I first got a MBA, and I used to have a laptop with a Momentus XT hybrid drive (which was fast to begin with). To the OP:

Store display models are not a good way to judge speed. A brand new computer with a fresh install of the apps you use regularly is the only way to really see. The display model has been left on constantly with random people opening lots of programs and never closing them.

If you go into it with really high expectations and wanting to see programs open before you even finish clicking on them you will be disappointed. But make no mistake, SSDs make a huge difference in day to day computing. The difference between a 1-2 second program load and a 3-4 program load doesn't seem like much but when you actually sit around using the computer it makes the overall experience much better. Everything feels a lot smoother and you never have to wait on the computer. Startup times and waking from sleep are especially fast.

It's so much of a difference that in 2013 I wouldn't even consider a computer with a spinning hard drive anymore. If I see a computer with just a hard drive and no SSD at all my first thought is "what a dinosaur."

 

[glenb2]

Give it a week and go back to a HDD based machine. It's easy to take SSD's for granted until you attempt to go back and perform the same work.

 

[ladeer]

ssd is great but for launching an application, well, you prob won't notice the biggest difference.
the biggest speed boost you see will be when you transfer file between your mac to another mac with ssd via thunderbolt. in that case, there is no bottleneck and speed will be fast

 

[ApplNat]

I use VMWare and run Windows 7 64 bit in a virtual machine. For years I have been saying that a Mac is the best Windows PC on the market.

I just installed this on my new 2013 MBA and if the screen flickering issue was resolved (a new/known problem with Fusion 5 on a 2013 MBA, I learned), I could say the MBA was the best Windows PC I've ever had. And I come from a 20 yr foundation of WinTel computers.

 

[saintforlife]

I was in the market for an MBA so I went over to a retailer to try them out. Very nice machine, quality, etc.
I am, however, disappointed with the SSD. Now that may not be the problem of the MBA but rather SSD's in general.

My point : where's that phenomenal speed everyone's talking about ? SSD's get so hyped and so you build up expectations. I thought that clicking on an application in the dock would launch it instantly, instead of me having to wait 2 seconds. The applications in question were iTunes, iPhoto and Activity monitor and to be honest, launching these on my iMac with HDD is only slightly slower.
So, based on my first impressions, SSD's aren't worth the money (well, not now anyway, perhaps in a year or two when they become affordable).

I don't know how else to say this, but you couldn't be more wrong. You are the first person I've ever heard that didn't notice a speed difference with an SSD. Once I went SSD in 2010, I haven't used a laptop without one since. The difference is huge. My 2010 MBA still boots up in 12 seconds and shuts down in 3 seconds. Let's see your HDD equipped iMac do that. The MBA with SSD blows most computers out of the water when it comes to speed of doing everyday tasks.

 

[GWIM2]

Just my experience

I retired my ( admittedly antique ) PC laptop with a disc and replaced it with an Air with SSD.

I no longer have to switch my laptop on, switch the kettle on, make some tea, and drink some tea before I can use my laptop.

I think the Air boots in about 13 seconds and closes in less. Used all day, every day, and if I divided the cost of it by the number of hours I've run it it would have to be several time more productive than the PC ever was.

Not going back to a hard disc on any upcoming purchases

 

[Dr. McKay]

Maybe I should have said that the speed 'didn't live up to my expectations' instead of 'disappointed'...

Anyhow, might as well buy a MBA instead of a MB Pro. Don't need desktop performance, already have an iMac, and the 13" MBA has a higher resolution than the non-retina MB Pro. The all-day battery life also seems very appealing (although I found a very good deal on a 8Gb-256Gb 2012 model that's hardly been used and 7 hours doesn't seem too shabby).

 

[palpatine]

Maybe I should have said that the speed 'didn't live up to my expectations' instead of 'disappointed'...

Anyhow, might as well buy a MBA instead of a MB Pro. Don't need desktop performance, already have an iMac, and the 13" MBA has a higher resolution than the non-retina MB Pro. The all-day battery life also seems very appealing (although I found a very good deal on a 8Gb-256Gb 2012 model that's hardly been used and 7 hours doesn't seem too shabby).

SSDs aren't such a big deal, in my opinion, so I agree about that, but there is a noticeable speed difference. I rarely start up apps (once a day, if that), and for the work I do, I don't see some of the speed gains that others do. Your mileage may vary.

It is almost always worth it (in my opinion) to get the newest Apple device. There are major changes under the hood, and with 12 hours of battery life on the 13" MBA, I think it far surpasses the previous year's model. I'd recommend getting it.

 

[flynz4]

For the record... I do NOT believe that the prime benefit if SSDs is "boot" and "application launch". Yes... of course, those are very visible benefits. However... the real benefit of an SSD is its affect on the overall operation of just about every aspect of using a computer.

For example... when I am using Aperture... I can bring 10's of thousands of pictures into the viewer... and as I scroll... I see real time movement of the actual images. With a HDD, I see empty boxes, and once the scrolling stops, the frames fill in. The difference in user experience is absolutely fantastic!!!

There is no way in hell that I would ever buy a computer in 2013 without an SSD. They are just too fundamental to a good user experience.

/Jim

 

[palpatine]

For the record... I do NOT believe that the prime benefit if SSDs is "boot" and "application launch". Yes... of course, those are very visible benefits. However... the real benefit of an SSD is its affect on the overall operation of just about every aspect of using a computer.

For example... when I am using Aperture... I can bring 10's of thousands of pictures into the viewer... and as I scroll... I see real time movement of the actual images. With a HDD, I see empty boxes, and once the scrolling stops, the frames fill in. The difference in user experience is absolutely fantastic!!!

There is no way in hell that I would ever buy a computer in 2013 without an SSD. They are just too fundamental to a good user experience.

/Jim

In my experience, writing in Pages with an HDD and SSD is subjectively the same. Objectively, maybe there is some speed thing going on in the background, but I haven't been able to detect it. Email is the same. I think people whose use cases already fall well within the parameters of what can be done with an HDD are not going to be as impressed as you. They aren't using Aperture, so it could be 2 or 64 cores and the fastest SSD on the market -- it doesn't make a huge difference to them.

No disagreement there with your conclusion about buying SSDs. I come at it from a different perspective, though. For me, though, it is about the integrity of my data. Hard drive failures ought to be less common.

Basically, I just want to say to the OP that I get it. The SSD may not look as impressive as it might to other people. You still need to avoid HDDs, though. Their day has passed, and you'll be better off with SSD, even if you don't get as much out of the experience as someone running heavy-duty apps.

 

[dyn]

SSD performance vs HDD performance is definitely not subjective, there is a measurable difference, and the difference is huge.

The performance difference is part subjective and part measurable. The problem is that measuring is only part of the story. Measuring only gives you data. Data in itself is completely useless. What you need to do is make it useful and you do that by something that is called analysing. It is this part that is the most important because it's what will translate numbers to real world situations. It's what tells you if 500MB/s is sensible or not. It is this part that is completely lacking in this topic.

Anybody who really understands things like ssd and hdd would include this in their story. They'd also point out there is more to ssd's than speed alone. If you have a notebook of some sort than an ssd is to be recommended, mostly not for speed but for the fact that it will endure all the bumps and other nasty stuff which would kill an hdd. They are also more silent (one of the reasons why they upgraded some machines at work with an ssd...).

OP clearly is not doing any side by side comparisons.

If you need to do side by side comparisons in order to notice speed differences than it's even worse than OPs experience. If you need to compare to notice than it simply isn't noticeable in the first place

 

[nilk]

The performance difference is part subjective and part measurable. The problem is that measuring is only part of the story. Measuring only gives you data. Data in itself is completely useless. What you need to do is make it useful and you do that by something that is called analysing. It is this part that is the most important because it's what will translate numbers to real world situations. It's what tells you if 500MB/s is sensible or not. It is this part that is completely lacking in this topic.

Anybody who really understands things like ssd and hdd would include this in their story. They'd also point out there is more to ssd's than speed alone. If you have a notebook of some sort than an ssd is to be recommended, mostly not for speed but for the fact that it will endure all the bumps and other nasty stuff which would kill an hdd. They are also more silent (one of the reasons why they upgraded some machines at work with an ssd...).

The performance difference is measurable and it is not subjective. The perception of the difference and whether or not you will notice it in your typical usage is subjective. At this point we're just arguing semantics and probably not contributing to the discussion, though.

 

[dyn]

Yep, that's exactly what I meant

 

[Dr. McKay]

I completely and utterly apologize : OMG, my new MBA is FAST !
Everything opens instantly, no waiting for the HDD to spin up... it's like an iPad on steroids

 

[Chicane-UK]

I completely and utterly apologize : OMG, my new MBA is FAST !
Everything opens instantly, no waiting for the HDD to spin up... it's like an iPad on steroids

Heh.. was just reading the start of the thread and thinking "Really!?" - first time I ever tried an SSD, I knew that mechanical drives were history for me. I've got the 512GB Samsung SSD in my Air and the speed is unbelievable Glad you've had a change of perspective on these things!

 

[Scott6666]

This is a stupid thread. SSD faster. By far. Close thread.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I completely and utterly apologize : OMG, my new MBA is FAST !
Everything opens instantly, no waiting for the HDD to spin up... it's like an iPad on steroids

Figured you'd see the light.

SSDs are the best things to happen to computers this decade.

 

[Sandman1969]

Just started setting up the wife's new MBA last night. I have had no experience with SSD systems.

All I can say is WOW! Bootup in seconds. I installed MS Office from an dmg file on the drive and it installed in 5 minutes. I believe that normally takes closer to 20 minutes. Everything is snappier. I can definitely tell the difference.

Now I am debating about upgrading our current MBP to an SSD drive. Wish the 512gb drives were a little cheaper.