[tpm] OT: Are SSDs really worth purchasing to speed up our computing experience?

[James E Keenan]

On 5/30/12 9:48 AM, Stuart Watt wrote:
> As a MacBook Air user, I can say yes. It's a surprisingly speedy little system, considering its relatively weak CPU, and I'd put most of this down to its SSD. I also have a Mac Mini, which has about an equivalent CPU but traditional hard disk, and the responsiveness is hugely better with the MacBook Air. It's very fast at application startup. An informal poll of a few people on Twitter a while back rated the MacBook Air as more responsive than the MacBook Pro, which had a much faster, and quad core, CPU. You are probably right that it is code bloat, but the code has to get off the disk somehow, and if its bloated, that will take longer than if it isn't. If disk latency is an issue, SSD is a good plan.
>
> For video editing, there will be no point - that's almost entirely CPU bound. Possibly the same is true for most image editing. But for general application responsiveness -- especially for large applications which might otherwise be hit by paging -- browsing data and so on, SSD works well for me.
>
> All the best
> Stuart
>
>
>
> On 2012-05-30, at 1:56 AM, Abuzar Toronto wrote:
>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> Sorry for the off-topic post, but I think some folks here would have
>> good advice on this question.  I've read that SSDs significantly
>> improve boot up speed, application startup time, etc.  Does anyone
>> have any experience with SSDs?

I don't know what SSD means in this context?   Can anyone explain?

jimk
(who is contemplating buying a new Mac laptop and wants to know how much 
machine to buy)