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Your experience with Apple delivered SSD in MBPs

henry72 said:
I reckon Apple SSD is the best choice for those who don't want to change the hard disk their self and cause another problem

Enjoy you new Mac :D
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I am. Fact is, I am capable of making hardware changes for I am a techie. But one of the key reasons I switched to Macs a decade ago was because I did enough tech work on the job, but at home I wanted stuff "that just works." I love getting a machine that is ready to go as is.

I'm not going to be stressing this machine, and I was gifted some money to buy myself a dream laptop. I did. The biggest screen, the fastest chip, 8GB RAM, and 512GB SSD. -- free to me. So to me this was an easy choice to go with Apple-installed everything. For three years they will fix anything that goes wrong. So I have peace of mind too.

SSD is amazing. I'm never going back :)
 
NebulaClash said:
It's also made my machine silent. It never makes a noise.

It's also made my machine run cooler. I have yet to hear a fan even when running video on battery power. I have yet to feel the bottom of the laptop running hot.

So decide what you want about SSD from various manufacturers. I know that I'm extremely happy with my Apple delivered Toshiba SSDs. It's made a significant difference in the enjoyment of my machine. And it's completely covered under warranty.
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Nebula,

Which machine did you get specifically, and what kind of battery life are you seeing with your 8gb SSD enabled machine?

With my first generation 2.66ghz 17" Unibody MBP, with 8 gigs of ram and a 256GB Crucial M225 drive installed, running a little more than half brightness, I got a minimum of 4.5 hours. Got up to a bit over 7 hours with light web browsing (no or VERY minimal flash), note taking, that kind of thing.
 
apolloa said:
You guys are still missing one very important point. That is that if you buy the Apple supplied SSD it can ALSO be covered by the Apple legendary 3 year warranty along with the rest of the machine.

How many 3rd party drives can you get a 3 year warranty on? Not to mention it's yet more cost.
I understand that 3rd party drives are faster, but they work out much more expensive, especially the 512GB size.
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Yeah, I can't find a 3rd party SSD anywhere for less than $1500 vs. Apple's full retail $1300 upgrade. Apple's upgrades are CHEAP this time around -- often less than you'd pay separately. This is definitely not normal, but very welcome! :)

Also, with my discount through photoshopuser.com, the drive is just $1196 installed & warrantied. My local Apple shop charges $75 to install these, and has a multiday wait (opportunity costs are another real cost).

So that's $379 or so less (plus opportunity costs) than buying a third party one, and AppleCare covers the whole thing should anything go wrong. Lots of pluses.

Memory upgrades this time around are killer, too. $368 to go to 8 gigs through the corp discount, which is less than macsales had the upgrade for last time I checked.

May as well go all-Apple this iteration.
 
macinside said:
Nebula,

Which machine did you get specifically, and what kind of battery life are you seeing with your 8gb SSD enabled machine?

With my first generation 2.66ghz 17" Unibody MBP, with 8 gigs of ram and a 256GB Crucial M225 drive installed, running a little more than half brightness, I got a minimum of 4.5 hours. Got up to a bit over 7 hours with light web browsing (no or VERY minimal flash), note taking, that kind of thing.
Click to expand...

My machine is the top-of-the line model in every respect. It's the 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 17-inch (glossy), with 8 GB RAM, and the 512 Apple-installed SSD from Toshiba.

I ran a battery test and found that I could do my usual Web surfing, emailing, video viewing, but no gaming on this machine, activity, and I went about 7 hours before I had to plug back in. This is with brightness at 75% because that's how I like it and I wanted a test that would be true to my working conditions. If I did half brightness I imagine I could have exceeded 8 hours.

Keep in mind that I wasn't at the computer the entire 7 hours, but used it off and on all day long. So there were stretches in there, maybe an hour all told, where it was sitting idle, but the rest of the time it was in fairly average and casual use.

I like the battery life on this one. Considering it's the high-end one, and I like a brighter screen, I'm thrilled to get 7 hours.
 
macinside said:
May as well go all-Apple this iteration.
Click to expand...

That's what I noticed this time too. Usually it's not smart to go through Apple for memory, but this time they weren't gouging as usual. It's a competitive price for the service, and I think this is one of those times when going all Apple can be defended as a reasonable choice.
 
As barefeats and Lloyd Cambers and others have all concluded...the OWC SSD is the clear winner. $730 for 200GB. If you can pony up the dough, go for it. Huge performance improvement.

Me?...whenever the price gets down to around $1.50 per GB...I'll be getting one for sure. But by then, who knows what the best choice will be.

For details, look here:
(http://macperformanceguide.com/index.html)
 
NebulaClash said:
My machine is the top-of-the line model in every respect. It's the 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 17-inch (glossy), with 8 GB RAM, and the 512 Apple-installed SSD from Toshiba.

I ran a battery test and found that I could do my usual Web surfing, emailing, video viewing, but no gaming on this machine, activity, and I went about 7 hours before I had to plug back in. This is with brightness at 75% because that's how I like it and I wanted a test that would be true to my working conditions. If I did half brightness I imagine I could have exceeded 8 hours.

Keep in mind that I wasn't at the computer the entire 7 hours, but used it off and on all day long. So there were stretches in there, maybe an hour all told, where it was sitting idle, but the rest of the time it was in fairly average and casual use.

I like the battery life on this one. Considering it's the high-end one, and I like a brighter screen, I'm thrilled to get 7 hours.
Click to expand...

Wow, that's really great! Thanks for that info. That's absolutely killer for a machine of that power, and those working conditions. (using it the way you like it -- the best way!)

Looks like the i7 17" is the battery champ so far over the i5 and 7 15 inchers, perhaps due to the larger battery.

Haven't seen many people talk about the battery life of the i5 17s yet, though. Who knows, they may eek out a few more minutes or an hour.
 
NebulaClash said:
That's what I noticed this time too. Usually it's not smart to go through Apple for memory, but this time they weren't gouging as usual. It's a competitive price for the service, and I think this is one of those times when going all Apple can be defended as a reasonable choice.
Click to expand...

Yes, indeed!

I hope this is a profitable price test for Apple. I'd love it if for here on I could justify ordering the machines fully loaded up Apple direct.
 
macinside said:
Wow, that's really great! Thanks for that info. That's absolutely killer for a machine of that power, and those working conditions. (using it the way you like it -- the best way!)

Looks like the i7 17" is the battery champ so far over the i5 and 7 15 inchers, perhaps due to the larger battery.

Haven't seen many people talk about the battery life of the i5 17s yet, though. Who knows, they may eek out a few more minutes or an hour.
Click to expand...

I'm very pleased. Usually getting a laptop means compromising something. This one doesn't feel like it is compromised anywhere. Granted this is the current top of the line, but it runs like one.
 
1st post, long-time lurker and techie.

I have a decked MBP 17" i7 anti-glare 8GB on order, and decided to put in a pair of OWC 200GB SSDs in RAID 0 inside this puppy, and have the originally-supplied 7200rpm 500GB HDD in an external enclosure through SATA-2 in the express34 slot.

Thing is, I'll be receptioning it when I get back in the country late next month, so I after config'ing it, I'll run some tests and post back some benchmarks. This will be my 1st time using SSDs, so it should be interesting to compare to my gold odd HDDs :)

K.


jaduffy108 said:
As barefeats and Lloyd Cambers and others have all concluded...the OWC SSD is the clear winner. $730 for 200GB. If you can pony up the dough, go for it. Huge performance improvement.

Me?...whenever the price gets down to around $1.50 per GB...I'll be getting one for sure. But by then, who knows what the best choice will be.

For details, look here:
(http://macperformanceguide.com/index.html)
Click to expand...
 
KKR75 said:
1st post, long-time lurker and techie.

I have a decked MBP 17" i7 anti-glare 8GB on order, and decided to put in a pair of OWC 200GB SSDs in RAID 0 inside this puppy, and have the originally-supplied 7200rpm 500GB HDD in an external enclosure through SATA-2 in the express34 slot.

Thing is, I'll be receptioning it when I get back in the country late next month, so I after config'ing it, I'll run some tests and post back some benchmarks. This will be my 1st time using SSDs, so it should be interesting to compare to my gold odd HDDs :)

K.
Click to expand...

I recommend you just buy one first, because SSD is powerful enough, leave the DVD drive alone

1) RAID 0 is not a safe method
2) Save you a lots of $$$$

BTW, is really up to u :D
 
KKR75 said:
1st post, long-time lurker and techie.

I have a decked MBP 17" i7 anti-glare 8GB on order, and decided to put in a pair of OWC 200GB SSDs in RAID 0 inside this puppy, and have the originally-supplied 7200rpm 500GB HDD in an external enclosure through SATA-2 in the express34 slot.
This will be my 1st time using SSDs, so it should be interesting to compare to my gold odd HDDs :)

K.
Click to expand...

Well, from what you're describing, it won't be much of a comparison at all. With this setup you'll be in a different league altogether.
 
Sorry for the sorta off-topic post, but I wanted to follow up my earlier battery life report. Yesterday I did an extreme test: full brightness, never sleep, nothing but videos (watching and converting) the entire time with several simultaneous windows.

4 hours.

So that's my worst case. I could watch a couple of movies on a cross-country flight at the very least.
 
Whoa! Update again: Just reading (and then confirming) the thread talking about apps that kick in Nvidia graphics, and Tweetie is one of those apps. I ran Tweetie the entire time I had that 7 hour result, and that means it was 7 hours under the more demanding graphics option.
 
I have a loaded late '09 uMBP, 8gb ram, factory/Apple 256g ssd. I xbenched it the first time I turned it on last October, and then today. I have used this machine pretty much daily since I got it. Here are the drive results:


10/29/09:

Disk Test 179.59
Sequential 120.47
Uncached Write 138.30 84.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 108.99 61.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 80.48 23.55 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 228.71 114.95 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 352.61
Uncached Write 266.60 28.22 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 201.40 64.48 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1242.03 8.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 548.67 101.81 MB/sec [256K blocks]

04/26/10

Results 188.22
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.3 (10D573)
Physical RAM 8192 MB
Model MacBookPro5,3
Drive Type APPLE SSD TS256A
Disk Test 188.22
Sequential 125.16
Uncached Write 140.94 86.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 124.26 70.31 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 80.03 23.42 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 231.42 116.31 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 379.35
Uncached Write 263.07 27.85 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 250.21 80.10 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1085.15 7.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 547.99 101.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
vacuumtube said:
I have used this machine pretty much daily since I got it.
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Wow, just wow! Thanks vacuumtube. It seems it even got FASTER all along! Looks like thats the way to go. I wonder how this happened, though...
 
expost said:
Wow, just wow! Thanks vacuumtube. It seems it even got FASTER all along! Looks like thats the way to go. I wonder how this happened, though...
Click to expand...

I don't know, and to be honest, I'm pleasantly surprised. I was mentally prepared from some slowdown over time, but I have noticed none. I had always planned to track it with xbench, but since I haven't noticed any slowdown, I kinda forgot about it until I ran across this thread. Maybe Apple has their own trim equivalent and doesn't talk about it? Either way, I'll never go back to a platter.
 
Btw, when I mean daily, I use it 8-10 hrs/day at work and it's my main machine at home as well.
 
The total lack of degredation is really impressive, except those numbers are about half of what the Intel drives lay down. They still absolutely crush what a mechanical drive can pull off though.
 
PaulDCarlucci said:
The total lack of degredation is really impressive, except those numbers are about half of what the Intel drives lay down. They still absolutely crush what a mechanical drive can pull off though.
Click to expand...

Now I'm torn. This drive feels super fast, but if I could double 'super fast' with an Intel drive....
 
Does the volume of a SSD affect the performance?
The performance of a 512G SSD is much better than a 256G?
Anyone knows? thanks.
 
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