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SSD MacBook Unboxing!

ipodtouchy333 said:
Jeeze, maybe he wants a small but powerful notebook for portability and not a 5.5 pound one with a larger screen. Who are you to ridicule what he buys? I would rather have a regular macbook than a pro with all those things. I'm pretty sure that it's not a waste of money to him if he decided that's what he wants and needs.
Click to expand...

Paying $600 for a SSD is not going to make the laptop any more powerful than it was before. Sorry but I hate seeing people sucked in by Apple's marketing.
 
neiltc13 said:
4GB RAM (do you even come close to using all this?)
2.4GHz processor (I bet you can't even see a difference between this and the 2.0)
SSD (honestly dude, all the benchmarks show that these things are really no better than standard HDDs)

So yeah, you could've had a MacBook Pro for that money and had a dedicated GPU and VASTLY better display but you opted for a smaller hard drive for more money.
Click to expand...

Geez, you'd swear the threadstarter spent your money to buy his MB. Why do you care so much? I'm sure he's really happy with his purchase and has zero regret with the configuration he chose.

I'm currently selling my 2 1/2 year old MBP to pick up the very same MB (with the same specs). I have no need for the 9600M graphics card and believe the MB is a great compromise. In a lot of ways, it's a 13.3" MacBook Pro.

And, yes, I'm opting for the SSD. Reading benchmarks are much like bench-racing. It doesn't always show what will happen in real world applications. For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3vQIEMtlUg
 
neiltc13 said:
Paying $600 for a SSD is not going to make the laptop any more powerful than it was before. Sorry but I hate seeing people sucked in by Apple's marketing.
Click to expand...
Hey, can you show me where Apple's "marketing" the SSD as something to make the MacBook more powerful?

Here's what the Apple store says:
MacBook also offers a solid-state drive option, which uses technology similar to that in the iPod nano and other flash-based products. Solid-state drives offer greater durability and improved resistance to data loss in the event of an accidental drop.
Click to expand...

Here's what the MacBook page on apple.com says:
You also have the option to upgrade to a 128GB solid-state drive, which has no moving parts, for enhanced durability
Click to expand...

Seems like they're marketing "durability", not performance.
 
neiltc13 said:
4GB RAM (do you even come close to using all this?)
2.4GHz processor (I bet you can't even see a difference between this and the 2.0)
SSD (honestly dude, all the benchmarks show that these things are really no better than standard HDDs)

So yeah, you could've had a MacBook Pro for that money and had a dedicated GPU and VASTLY better display but you opted for a smaller hard drive for more money.
Click to expand...

maybe he didn't want a massively large 15' inch laptop? macbook pros are hardly even portable. The assumption that you dont think he needs 4gb of ram is also ignorant. I have 2gb of ram just running word, itunes, and safari at the same times hogs nearly all of the ram....... You cant see the diff between a 2.4 and a 2.0???? are you effing kidding me?
 
The MacBook Pro with 4 GB ram and with the SSD would have cost way more.

Did it ever occur to you that the OP didn't need a 15" screen and a crazy-powerful dedicated video card?

Show me a machine that's as well designed as the MacBook and has the same specs to back it up and I guarantee it won't be found for all that much cheaper...

___

thanks for the pictures! I really dig the new design of the MacBook, even though I haven't seen one in person.

What are your thoughts on the SSD? Is it quieter? Boot faster? etc.
 
neiltc13 said:
Paying $600 for a SSD is not going to make the laptop any more powerful than it was before. Sorry but I hate seeing people sucked in by Apple's marketing.
Click to expand...

You're ignorant and incredibly rude - that's a poor combination. You should really step back and evaluate what you're saying before you say it.

OP - it looks like a nice machine. If I had done it myself, I'd have put in my own parts but more power to ya for going Apple factory.
 
neiltc13 said:
4GB RAM (do you even come close to using all this?)
2.4GHz processor (I bet you can't even see a difference between this and the 2.0)
SSD (honestly dude, all the benchmarks show that these things are really no better than standard HDDs)

So yeah, you could've had a MacBook Pro for that money and had a dedicated GPU and VASTLY better display but you opted for a smaller hard drive for more money.
Click to expand...

The amount of brave people hiding behind a keyboard and monitor on the board continue to amaze me. Would you be this rude to someone in person? I bet you have many friends!
 
I swear if some of you guys had your way this board would turn into a bed of roses filled with everyone telling everyone else how great their computers are.

Okay, maybe I was a little brash in the way I expressed what I was trying to say, but the reality is that spending $600 for a SMALLER disk which has been proven in countless benchmarks to be very similar in performance to a standard magnetic drive is a waste. I don't think there is any other way to express this. How can anyone justify spending more money on a lesser product?

To be honest I also don't really know what the OP wanted us to reply with. Did he just want an endless list of people saying "congratulations!!!"?
 
neiltc13 said:
I swear if some of you guys had your way this board would turn into a bed of roses filled with everyone telling everyone else how great their computers are.

Okay, maybe I was a little brash in the way I expressed what I was trying to say, but the reality is that spending $600 for a SMALLER disk which has been proven in countless benchmarks to be very similar in performance to a standard magnetic drive is a waste. I don't think there is any other way to express this. How can anyone justify spending more money on a lesser product?

To be honest I also don't really know what the OP wanted us to reply with. Did he just want an endless list of people saying "congratulations!!!"?
Click to expand...

SSD is essential if you use your computer in any bumpy environment. It doesn't matter how big or how fast your drive is if it fails on you in the field.

And more importantly, hell yes SSD drives are faster, at least in terms of read speed.
 
Here is my test vs. the OP.

You will find my old MBP numbers first, his second.
Dissect as you please. Keeping in mind, very similar specs. I had Entourage open, and iTunes while running, not a fresh reboot in 3 days.


Compare to Other Systems / of type "MacBook Pro (Core 2)" / of type "MacBook (Core 2)"

"BPS MPB" MacBook Pro (Core 2) MINE

Vs.

"Tyson Junkers’s MacBook" MacBook (Core 2) His


Aluminum MacBook
2.4 GHz
4 GB Ram
128 SSD

Longer is better — scores greater than 300 will be truncated, and have "—>" inside the bar

Name Score Detail
Results
113.33
150.52


System Info

Xbench Version

1.3
System Version


10.5.5 (9F33)
10.5.5 (9F2114)
Physical RAM


4096 MB
4096 MB
Model


MacBookPro4,1
MacBook5,1
Drive Type

Apple sparse bundle disk image
APPLE SSD SM128
CPU Test
168.08
136.09


GCD Loop
291.59
244.41
15.37 Mops/sec
12.88 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic
140.21
109.32
3.33 Gflop/sec
2.60 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT
118.85
96.55
3.92 Gflop/sec
3.19 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library
207.37
172.51
36.11 Mops/sec
30.04 Mops/sec
Thread Test
316.74—>
308.80—>


Computation
484.87—>
473.56—>
9.82 Mops/sec, 4 threads
9.59 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention
235.19
229.09
10.12 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
9.86 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test
168.26
178.67


System
187.24
201.02


Allocate
288.97
250.96
1.06 Malloc/sec
921.61 Kalloc/sec
Fill
152.57
167.40
7418.33 MB/sec
8139.20 MB/sec
Copy
166.46
201.41
3438.16 MB/sec
4159.97 MB/sec
Stream
152.77
160.79


Copy
145.99
153.43
3015.45 MB/sec
3168.95 MB/sec
Scale
144.10
153.98
2976.99 MB/sec
3181.19 MB/sec
Add
160.56
169.31
3420.26 MB/sec
3606.58 MB/sec
Triad
162.19
167.85
3469.71 MB/sec
3590.63 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test
194.84
165.03


Line
184.54
163.19
12.29 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
10.86 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle
224.20
202.53
66.94 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
60.46 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle
186.37
164.56
15.19 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
13.41 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier
194.26
164.40
4.90 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
4.15 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text
189.77
141.41
11.87 Kchars/sec
8.85 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test
182.00
156.80


Spinning Squares
182.00
156.80
230.88 frames/sec
198.91 frames/sec
User Interface Test
248.18
272.91


Elements
248.18
272.91
1.14 Krefresh/sec
1.25 Krefresh/sec
Disk Test
31.19
70.32


Sequential
44.58
54.05


Uncached Write
50.49
46.66
31.00 MB/sec [4K blocks]
28.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
59.67
49.47
33.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
27.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
27.14
37.03
7.94 MB/sec [4K blocks]
10.84 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
61.31
186.96
30.81 MB/sec [256K blocks]
93.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
23.99
100.59


Uncached Write
8.36
51.76
0.89 MB/sec [4K blocks]
5.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
56.93
57.13
18.22 MB/sec [256K blocks]
18.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
56.85
1179.26—>
0.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]
8.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
83.46
477.55—>
15.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]
88.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
:eek:
 
neiltc13 said:
I swear if some of you guys had your way this board would turn into a bed of roses filled with everyone telling everyone else how great their computers are.

Okay, maybe I was a little brash in the way I expressed what I was trying to say, but the reality is that spending $600 for a SMALLER disk which has been proven in countless benchmarks to be very similar in performance to a standard magnetic drive is a waste. I don't think there is any other way to express this. How can anyone justify spending more money on a lesser product?

To be honest I also don't really know what the OP wanted us to reply with. Did he just want an endless list of people saying "congratulations!!!"?
Click to expand...

Have you even used a proper SSD drive before? Access time on a SSD is so much faster, which means all your apps will open instantly compared to a couple of seconds when using a normal HDD. the mechanical HD, along with DVD drives, are the limiting factors in computers nowadays. SSD is the future whether you like it or not. I don't think big companys like Intel and Seagate would be investing in the technology if they did not think it was better than current HDDs
 
fuzzielitlpanda said:
Have you even used a proper SSD drive before? Access time on a SSD is so much faster, which means all your apps will open instantly compared to a couple of seconds when using a normal HDD. the mechanical HD, along with DVD drives, are the limiting factors in computers nowadays. SSD is the future whether you like it or not. I don't think big companys like Intel and Seagate would be investing in the technology if they did not think it was better than current HDDs
Click to expand...

Agreed, this guy probably never even used an SSD drive before.

From what I hear, the initial loading of apps will be a lot faster. The difference would probably be very noticeable on a MBA which has a slow drive to begin with.

Oh, and I disagree with neiltc13. The OP has a very good reason to post pictures and a thread since there aren't that many unboxing photos out there and this is a Mac forum after all. If you don't want to see unboxing pictures then why did you click and reply to this thread?! The OP was very descriptive in the title so I'm sure you knew what to expect...

Please try not to be rude in your future postings. There really is no reason to be rude on this forum at all since it's supposed to be a leisurely place and you should not feel so threatened as to lash out on someone who is just participating in the MacRumors community. MacRumors does not tolerate aggressive/rude posts. Thank you.
 
queshy said:
Oh, and I disagree with neiltc13. The OP has a very good reason to post pictures and a thread since there aren't that many unboxing photos out there and this is a Mac forum after all. If you don't want to see unboxing pictures then why did you click and reply to this thread?! The OP was very descriptive in the title so I'm sure you knew what to expect...

Please try not to be rude in your future postings. There really is no reason to be rude on this forum at all since it's supposed to be a leisurely place and you should not feel so threatened as to lash out on someone who is just participating in the MacRumors community. MacRumors does not tolerate aggressive/rude posts. Thank you.
Click to expand...

I didn't say he was wrong to post pictures...
 
wow.. looks like that SSD is rocking the random read speeds.. if only they could ramp them up for writing.
 
Congrats on the new computer. I picked up my 2.4 the other day and I love it.

Kenal0
 
neiltc13 said:
I swear if some of you guys had your way this board would turn into a bed of roses filled with everyone telling everyone else how great their computers are.

Okay, maybe I was a little brash in the way I expressed what I was trying to say, but the reality is that spending $600 for a SMALLER disk which has been proven in countless benchmarks to be very similar in performance to a standard magnetic drive is a waste. I don't think there is any other way to express this. How can anyone justify spending more money on a lesser product?

To be honest I also don't really know what the OP wanted us to reply with. Did he just want an endless list of people saying "congratulations!!!"?
Click to expand...

SSD is significantly faster in many real world situations. Much less heat. Lighter. Silent. Size is not a factor for many of us that use our notebooks as secondary machines.

Anyways this argument is pointless...we all understand that solid state drives will completely replace platter drives in notebook computers in the near future.
 
neiltc13 said:
I didn't say he was wrong to post pictures...
Click to expand...

You did, sort of, right here:

neiltc13 said:
To be honest I also don't really know what the OP wanted us to reply with. Did he just want an endless list of people saying "congratulations!!!"?
Click to expand...

Anyways I don't want to get into a big long argument. Just please - next time there is no need to be rude or to start an argument. Let's get back on topic now.
 
I found this post and I noticed several people complaining about the SSD offered in the new Macbooks and Macbook Pros.

Let's discuss a few points made in the thread:

neiltc13 said:
Paying $600 for a SSD is not going to make the laptop any more powerful than it was before. Sorry but I hate seeing people sucked in by Apple's marketing.
Click to expand...

Apple markets the SSD as being more durable from what I can see. That is definitely true as it has no moving parts to crash if something were to happen. I don't recall seeing any marketing from Apple that claims performance increases from the SSD.

Have others made the claims in reviews? Certainly.

neiltc13 said:
SSD (honestly dude, all the benchmarks show that these things are really no better than standard HDDs)
Click to expand...

Let's compare Xbench stats between the 128GB SSD in a Macbook Pro, a 80GB 5400rpm disk in a Mac Mini, and a 200GB 7200rpm HD in a Macbook Pro:

Mac Mini (80GB 5400rpm):

Sequential 67.22
Uncached Write 69.74 42.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 68.11 38.54 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 55.76 16.32 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 79.68 40.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 27.02
Uncached Write 9.39 0.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 65.57 20.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 63.56 0.45 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 94.63 17.56 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Macbook Pro (200GB 7200rpm):

Sequential 80.05

Uncached Write 82.40 50.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 96.00 54.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 56.37 16.50 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 103.38 51.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 26.24
Uncached Write 8.10 0.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 100.76 32.26 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 88.54 0.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 127.53 23.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Macbook Pro (128GB SSD):

Sequential 71.28

Uncached Write 107.34 65.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 69.55 39.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 36.98 10.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 185.97 93.47 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 115.88
Uncached Write 45.71 4.84 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 102.46 32.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1187.04 8.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 490.77 91.07 MB/sec [256K blocks]

These test results show the SSD holds it's own pretty well.

The cost per GB is very high, but I like my SSD for performance and durability. I can just close the lid, pick up my computer, and walk out the door when I need to. I don't need to worry about waiting for the disk to spin down.

Edit: Don't forget about the additional benefits such as noise reduction, increased battery life by way of power consumption of the drive or less heat generated by the drive, and as Apple markets: durability.
 
neiltc13 said:
I swear if some of you guys had your way this board would turn into a bed of roses filled with everyone telling everyone else how great their computers are.

Okay, maybe I was a little brash in the way I expressed what I was trying to say, but the reality is that spending $600 for a SMALLER disk which has been proven in countless benchmarks to be very similar in performance to a standard magnetic drive is a waste. I don't think there is any other way to express this. How can anyone justify spending more money on a lesser product?

To be honest I also don't really know what the OP wanted us to reply with. Did he just want an endless list of people saying "congratulations!!!"?
Click to expand...

The performance is very similar according to the measured metrics, but those metrics are not exhaustive. I would argue that there is still added value in the SSD and the dollar value of the differences is for each person to determine. I expect that the SSDs operate better in rugged environments (temperature extremes and jarring/bumpy environs). I also expect that the lifetime of the drives is rated with a higher number of hours-to-failure. That alone may be very important to someone. If you are paid even a modest professional wage ($50/hour?) to do your work then a hard drive failure can be more costly than the drive - mostly due to downtime while a new drive is obtained.

I think the machine choice is excellent and I am considering the same.
 
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