OCZ Solid Series for Macbook

[hailst0rm]

I've had my new 2.4GHz Macbook for a week now. It doesn't really feel that much faster than my old whitebook. I've been looking at upgrading to SSD.

I've read that any drive using the Jmicron controller is best avoided.

OCZ now have the "Solid Series" and the "Vertex Series". Although the description for the Vertex mentions it uses a new controller, nothing is mentioned about the Solid Series.

Anyone used one of these drives yet? Any experience or info you could share?

 

[yozh]

I've had my new 2.4GHz Macbook for a week now. It doesn't really feel that much faster than my old whitebook. I've been looking at upgrading to SSD.

I've read that any drive using the Jmicron controller is best avoided.

OCZ now have the "Solid Series" and the "Vertex Series". Although the description for the Vertex mentions it uses a new controller, nothing is mentioned about the Solid Series.

Anyone used one of these drives yet? Any experience or info you could share?

I would like to know the same thing. The new OCZ Solid 60GB is on sale now, and can be had for very cheap. I`m really considering it. What do people think about this drive ?

 

[tubbymac]

The OCZ core series, both version 1 and 2 use the JMicron controller. The Vertex uses the Indilium (not sure of the spelling) controller. The newest OCZ, the Summit - uses the Samsung controller.

I just purchased the Corsair 128 SSD instead and am waiting for it to be delivered. The Corsair is the exact same Samsung one that is used by Apple with the Samsung controller. The only difference is it that it has a Corsair logo on it instead of a Samsung logo and doesn't have the Apple mark up added in the price.

 

[yozh]

The OCZ core series, both version 1 and 2 use the JMicron controller. The Vertex uses the Indilium (not sure of the spelling) controller. The newest OCZ, the Summit - uses the Samsung controller.

I just purchased the Corsair 128 SSD instead and am waiting for it to be delivered. The Corsair is the exact same Samsung one that is used by Apple with the Samsung controller. The only difference is it that it has a Corsair logo on it instead of a Samsung logo and doesn't have the Apple mark up added in the price.

How much was it ?

 

[tubbymac]

How much was it ?

It's $327 US at Newegg. I got it for $399 CDN from Ncix but it's going for as low as $389 CDN over here in Canada. I think this is pretty cheap for a 128 gig SSD but it's definitely much more expensive than a normal hard drive.

It arrived the next day after I ordered it so I'm surprised at how fast it was delivered. Some initial impressions so far:

Battery life is INSANE on this thing. Did a fresh install of OSX which took only about 15 minutes and with display at 40% brightness and surfing the web I'm at 73% battery life with 4:43 hours of battery remaining. So at full charge that's about 6 hours of battery life. I notice the battery meter doesn't jump around as much as on the stock hard drive either. With the hard drive it would ping pong around when you wrote something to the drive. This SSD stays very constant in terms of power drain. It's also dead silent, runs cooler, and let's me do silly stuff like surf with the machine sideways in bed

Apps load super fast, usually before a full bounce on he OSX dock - even iTunes which used to take a few bounces with the hard drive. Big web pages load faster now too. I was surprised on that but it seems the hard drive was actually limiting how fast "blog" style news sites could load since there were so many pictures/text/comments to grab.

Benchmarks you can find all over the place, so haven't done any yet. The only "benchmark" I did so far was to run the Windows Experience Score on bootcamp. My HD got a 5.2 score before and now it's 6.9.

Obviously everything feels much snappier and faster in normal use. Definitely worth it if you have the money. The only strange thing was that you have to use Disk Utility during the install to make a "GUID Partition Table" before OSX will load. You only have to do that once and never again since the drive comes by default setup with a Master Boot Record for Windows.

 

[yozh]

It's $327 US at Newegg. I got it for $399 CDN from Ncix but it's going for as low as $389 CDN over here in Canada. I think this is pretty cheap for a 128 gig SSD but it's definitely much more expensive than a normal hard drive.

It arrived the next day after I ordered it so I'm surprised at how fast it was delivered. Some initial impressions so far:

Battery life is INSANE on this thing. Did a fresh install of OSX which took only about 15 minutes and with display at 40% brightness and surfing the web I'm at 73% battery life with 4:43 hours of battery remaining. So at full charge that's about 6 hours of battery life. I notice the battery meter doesn't jump around as much as on the stock hard drive either. With the hard drive it would ping pong around when you wrote something to the drive. This SSD stays very constant in terms of power drain. It's also dead silent, runs cooler, and let's me do silly stuff like surf with the machine sideways in bed

Apps load super fast, usually before a full bounce on he OSX dock - even iTunes which used to take a few bounces with the hard drive. Big web pages load faster now too. I was surprised on that but it seems the hard drive was actually limiting how fast "blog" style news sites could load since there were so many pictures/text/comments to grab.

Benchmarks you can find all over the place, so haven't done any yet. The only "benchmark" I did so far was to run the Windows Experience Score on bootcamp. My HD got a 5.2 score before and now it's 6.9.

Obviously everything feels much snappier and faster in normal use. Definitely worth it if you have the money. The only strange thing was that you have to use Disk Utility during the install to make a "GUID Partition Table" before OSX will load. You only have to do that once and never again since the drive comes by default setup with a Master Boot Record for Windows.

Yeah I really want to get this and specially the way it sounds it gives new meaning to fast, but this is too much money for 128GB I cant justify to my self or my wife . When the price is half 150 or so I`ll get it. Sounds like the dual controller is the key to speed.