New computer with SSD hard drive - WOW!

[Bruce Page]

I just finished setting up a new PC with a 250gb SSD drive. 26 seconds from power on to ready to go. :) It makes my old XP machine seem like a dinosaur.

[Bill Huber]

I have been thinking about installing one in my PC, just have not done it.
The price for SSDs have really come down in the last few months.

The speed of loading some software is just unreal, it is just kind of there when you hit the icon.

[Brian Elfert]

I have had an SSD since 2011 and yes, they are fast! It is the best upgrade to do to any PC I have ever found. There are some really good deals right now and you can get brand name 256GB SSDs for $100 or so. You really want to check reviews before buying as some SSDs are known to die prematurely. Some folks will buy both an SSD and a hard drive and put all their data on the hard drive. The SSD is only for the OS and programs. This doesn't work so well on most laptops, but will work on most desktops.

[Bruce Page]

I go back to the early days of AutoCad where you could have breakfast and a smoke in less time than it took to render a drawing. The speed of things today is unreal!

[Brett Luna]

I built a new PC this year and spec'd a Samsung 500 GB SSD for the OS and I was also floored by the performance gain. If I didn't have so many toys on my woodworking wannalist, I'd be looking hard at buying the 1 TB version, which is $439.99 right now.

[Brett Luna]

I go back to the early days of AutoCad where you could have breakfast and a smoke in less time than it took to render a drawing. The speed of things today is unreal!

I went a long time between builds and pretty much drove the wheels off the old gal before the latest upgrade. Even some SketchUp operations and saves were taking a lot longer than I thought reasonable. That played a big part in the decision to upgrade.

[Jason Roehl]

A old classmate of mine (who now works for Google) set up a laptop with Linux and an SSD a couple years back. He said boot-up was all of 7 seconds.

[Mark Bolton]

I have to say, I am NOT a computer guy so I really have no idea but I have a new machine with no SSD and I am up and working in seconds.. of course the machine is still booting in the background but I can get up, boot a browser, SU, and so on in no time. Literally within 5 seconds of hitting enter with my password at log-in I am looking at my desktop and its active (not sitting there un-clickable).

I really toiled with the SSD option when I bought this machine and I cant honestly say Ive ever felt I really needed to be any faster.

[Myk Rian]

Where they really excel is as a swapfile drive. Especially when doing video files in HDMI.

[Bill Huber]

I have to say, I am NOT a computer guy so I really have no idea but I have a new machine with no SSD and I am up and working in seconds.. of course the machine is still booting in the background but I can get up, boot a browser, SU, and so on in no time. Literally within 5 seconds of hitting enter with my password at log-in I am looking at my desktop and its active (not sitting there un-clickable).

I really toiled with the SSD option when I bought this machine and I cant honestly say Ive ever felt I really needed to be any faster.

What OS are you using and are you coming out of sleep mode of is this at full boot?

[Bill Huber]

I go back to the early days of AutoCad where you could have breakfast and a smoke in less time than it took to render a drawing. The speed of things today is unreal!

When the MP3 format came out way back when it would take 45 minutes to compress a WAV music file to an MP3, now I do it in 4 seconds, yes things have changed..

[Mark Bolton]

What OS are you using and are you coming out of sleep mode of is this at full boot?

8.1, and no, Im talking from full shutdown. I cant say that Ive ever timed it but I can say Ive never found myself sitting there saying "COME ON!!" and ready to pound on the desk like I used to. I come from an old vista machine where I would boot it, and go make coffee, go to the bathroom, come back, logon, then go do something else.. Not the case.

[Matt Meiser]

I haven't timed it but my personal laptop is up and running before the Win 7 startup screen finishes spinning together the 4 window panes. Its actually slower to restart from hibernation by maybe 2 seconds.

My wife and daughter are getting SSDs for Christmas. Hoping it breathes new life into my daughters aging cheap laptop, but they'll both appreciate the battery life.

[Mike Henderson]

I have SSDs in my machines and I find they boot significantly faster. I'm sold on them.

Mike

[Robert LaPlaca]

I just finished setting up a new PC with a 250gb SSD drive. 26 seconds from power on to ready to go. :) It makes my old XP machine seem like a dinosaur.

Speaking of dinosaurs, I have been involved in the IT field a really really long time, way back in 1986 Intel (yes Intel) was producing a SSD for IBM mainframe computers that emulated the IBM 3380 disk drive. The unit was the size of four refrigerators put together, IIRC had 1.3 gigabytes of storage, everything old is new again

[Larry Edgerton]

I have a 1TB version and everything is instant. My computer thinks faster than I do.........:o

Larry

[Mike Null]

I have to run an XP machine to operate one of my engravers. Would an SSD speed that up enough to justify the expense?

[Brad Schafer]

I have to run an XP machine to operate one of my engravers. Would an SSD speed that up enough to justify the expense?

yes with caveat - you need the correct driver. remember that XP has gone dormie. make sure the drive is explicitly plug/play with XP, or that a driver is provided.

[Curt Harms]

I have had an SSD since 2011 and yes, they are fast! It is the best upgrade to do to any PC I have ever found. There are some really good deals right now and you can get brand name 256GB SSDs for $100 or so. You really want to check reviews before buying as some SSDs are known to die prematurely. Some folks will buy both an SSD and a hard drive and put all their data on the hard drive. The SSD is only for the OS and programs. This doesn't work so well on most laptops, but will work on most desktops.

This seems like a pretty sensible option. I've also wondered about SDHC cards for data storage on notebooks. There are getting to be some pretty high capacity SDHC cards and most recent notebooks seem to have readers as standard equipment. Are class 10 SDHC cards too slow?

[Brian Elfert]

yes with caveat - you need the correct driver. remember that XP has gone dormie. make sure the drive is explicitly plug/play with XP, or that a driver is provided.

Bot only might you need a driver, you need to turn off certain features in Windows XP that can cause problems with an SSD. Windows 7/8/8.1 automatically detect SSDs and turn the features off automatically.

[Jim Becker]

Yea, my MBPr 13" has an SSD and it's the best thing since sliced bread for startup AND running speed. I think that we all sometimes don't realize just how much a computer accesses the drive during normal operation and that affects system speed. Access from SSD is multitude's faster than a mechanical hard drive!