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Comment by andrewljohnson | Hacker News Reader

I'm never buying a computer that lacks an SSD again. SSDs make launching programs instantaneous, compiling code much faster, and rebooting and/or switching user accounts painless. These things save me so much cumulative time, and when I touch a computer without an SSD it's a shock to the system.

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I wonder about this. I had an SSD on my macbook pro for about a year, before taking it out and putting in my desktop. The only noticeable difference, in my opinion, was boot time and applications start up a bit faster. Normal daily work (I'm a programmer) was not affected much. I got the biggest improvement from maxing out ram at 8GB.

I wonder though if this was merely an artifact of Snow Leopard not optimizing for SSDs. On my Windows 7 box it's amazing how much faster an SSD is.

I get the feeling Apple knows and uses extremely SSD upgrades to drive higher checkout prices with artificially depressed advertised prices. (Yes, I am bitter that my old MBP is not user upgradeable. I understand that the newer ones are, though.)

There are guides at http://www.ifixit.com/

You can look through the steps it would take to see if your comfortable doing it yourself.

I have done many repairs on my MBP and they were pretty easy. just required patience.

If one were to get a MBP with the standard Serial ATA Drive, could it later be replaced with SSD? I've never seen an SSD drive, I'm wondering if the conector is the same as Serial ATA?

I'm thinking I might just get the standard drive and upgrade it aftermarket.

I've done this with the two MBP's we have at our house. It was very simple (around 8 screws). Just make sure you have a tiny screwdriver set (like those used for glasses). You can usually search for macbook screwdriver and find ones that work for <$10

> I've never seen an SSD drive, I'm wondering if the conector is the same as Serial ATA?

Yes, modern off-the-shelf SSDs in a normal package use SATA (what else would they use?).

They look exactly like your standard 2.5" drive, except without breathing holes and sometimes thinner with a spacer to reach normal 2.5" height.

To see what SSDs look like, just click around in Anandtech's storage articles category[0], just ignore PCI-E SSDs (they're a bit of a special case)

[0] http://www.anandtech.com/tag/storage

Yes, many SSD's use SATA.

All MacBook Pro models are upgradeable, you just need the right kit. http://macsales.com/ usually has you covered, just pick your model and you can see what options you have. There's even a way to replace your usually useless optical drive with a special bracket for an SSD drive.

> Yes, I am bitter that my old MBP is not user upgradeable. I understand that the newer ones are, though.

As far as I know, there has never been a non-user-serviceable unibody MBP. Pre-unibody MBP (using the old Powerbook design) essentially weren't as you had to take apart half the machine to get at its guts, but all unibody MBPs are as simple to service as 10 screws holding the bottom plate (you may need to get a non-philips scredriver for some series in some countries).

My 2010 MBP even described the operation to change RAM and HDD/SSD in the booklet shipped with the machine.

Yep. Since I have an MBP, it is engineered to survive more than 4 years (after warranty and class action mandated repairs). Mine is pre-unibody.

Was about to post price comparisons but YEESH Apple is selling 256GB SSDs [0] for $200 more than Crucial SSDs on NewEgg. [1]

[0] http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD318LL/A?select=select&...

[1] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...

Hi Andrew,

what about the reliability? It seems that SSD's are at least twice as prone to irrecoverable crashes as mechanical drives (excluding cases of physical damage like the laptop falling off the desk)? What is your experience?

On topic - the quad core Sandy Bridge is already extremely powerful, these laptops will last for years to come performance-wise...

Use a backup system. A factor of 2x isn't life changing. The cost of crash recovery is more than balanced by the improved productivity pre-crash.

If only there was one built in to the operating system...

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