Wait, wtf. This article sucks. They show the power consumption ratings for the drives, and the SSD's are all clearly lower, but then conclude that "something else" is causing the lower battery lives. And done.

Idiots!

They'll have to take a look at the duty cycle of the drives. Do the SSD's randomly read and write data? Do they not use any type of querying?

Log1c

Well i can still bet you that the macbook air SSD (a samsung, not tested here) is much faster during normal use (i.e. random read) than the 4200 HD option. I have tested both, mostly on application start up times, loading images, etc.

And to those of you who say i am justifying my purchase, maybeiamwannafightaboutit?

MrBlahBlah

Until you see tech in real life and test it I don't believe any promises.
That said where are hybrid drives? Surly the tech is easily available. I want a 8GB flash drive for fast boots and some durable space, and a platter for big space.

fastm3driver

this is just crazy, just when i thought SSDs had HDDs beat in everything-(stability, performance, amount of read/write cycles, e.t.c) but this changes everything. well unless they develop large SSDs for desktops

revolution-inc

Ah, don't ban Shark, plenty of other idiots here have gotten away with worse (ME).

As for the early adopters, all I can say is 'HA HA!'.

MagnoliaBoy

I thought we covered this in Adam Frucci's post "The Macbook Air SSD Performance Boost: Pretty Much Non-Existent": [gizmodo.com]

Afternoting how the perfomance edge wasn't there, there was this:

"But what about battery life, that had to be way better, right? Nope. Battery life wasn't affected at all, strangely enough, with the SSD model providing a paltry 2.5 hours of use before needing to be recharged. In fact, it seems like there was really only one place where the performance was better on the SSD model."

Zlevee

Actually, wasn't this already expected when solid-state drives first emerged? This is the reason why there was a short hype about solid-state hybrid drives to compensate for the shortcomings. Oh well, I guess people forgot.

@Kaiser-Machead...: I actually LOL'ed at that. (Yuck. It felt weird typing that. Embarassing, really.)

ripfire

From what I can tell from the article, if a manufacturer were to flash a simple "idle" mechanism to the drive, it could cut power consumption to zero, and even out the stats a bit. That can't be terribly hard to work into a product, can it? The article mentions the wear-leveling management, but I fail to see how the two are related... wouldn't the wear management come online when the drive does? Also, sorry for my n00bishness here, but what's the typical warm up time for an SSD (the analogue to spin up time for a normal hd)?

behavin

Do you still have to cool these drives? Because if you don't that may make it worth it.

Digo

I had kinda wondered about that... I haven't trusted flash based storage ever since my Lexar 133x pro CF card corrupted on a very important shoot.

Josh_Geyer

that's why i need a bigger battery for my eee

godwhacker

Buy it if you plan to use your notebook in a hummy in the Dakar/Paris rally

chocolim

@ThisIsSharksTerriroty: Did you think that adding more words to your comment made it something that was not equivalent to "First!"? Or perhaps you just haven't gotten the memo.
...may the banhammer be swift and painless...

As for the article...why am I not surprised to find that everyone rushing to be on the cutting edge of technology just wasted their money?
(I know, I know...the power saving isn't the only reason...)

SgtMac02

I'm really happy I didn't buy one now.

Lupison

@ThisIsSharksTerriroty: we'll get you another copy of that memo

Now, an SSD in an 2.5 inch enclosure to keep my music on would probably be more reliable. But thats basically a giant flash drive, which is exactly what I need.

jmurph05

@itchytooth: @Kaiser-Machead's Chips Ahoy!: naw I had the talking to i just was so excited no one had commented yet i had to do it...even the likes of gods fail to be perfect

ThisIsSharksTerriroty

More power consumption, poorer write/reads in specific scenarios, massive price premium, and tiny capacity. What exactly are SSDs good for exactly?

I think I am going to treat SSDs like Vista and wait until the proper successor is released.

SuperSan

@ThisIsSharksTerriroty: Dude. Rewind about 15 hours. There are no gold medals for a first post here.

qbrad

well i would need more proof of this cuz EVERY1 had suggested there would b an upwards of 30% better battery life and this is the first i've heard of a "downgrade"...although if my laptop starts up on vista in under 20s and shuts down in about 2secs (from videos out there on youtube land) and has (sorry giz) arousingly high read/write speeds, i'll take the battery sacrifice ANY day

ThisIsSharksTerriroty

@ThisIsSharksTerriroty: Bailiff, whack his peepee!

I never really bought into the SSD thing so much for battery life, but rather durability, but this is still disappointing.

Kaiser-Machead's Chips Ahoy!

Cool! I can't afford them anyway!

@ThisIsSharksTerriroty: I guess you missed the meeting.

itchytooth

wooo first time ever as first comment...hopefully no one comments while i write this...now i must go and actually read the article

ThisIsSharksTerriroty

everyone in theory should be banned here as they are off topic talking about thisissharkterriroty's comment...... also, don't ban thisissharkterriroty as he is jsut ignorant and this new reigme of Orwellian moderators is only new.

Now while trying to make this comment on topic and relevant, how does this explain why iPod touches have better battery-life (assuming Wi-Fi is off)

Yeebles

@ThisIsSharksTerriroty: "wooo first time ever as first comment...hopefully my laptop doesn't run out of juice while i write this...since i use an SSD...now i must go and actually read the article"
Fixed for relevance. =)

Nakko

They are too expensive anyway...

Benitocarmona

One thing to point out is that (at least in Windows, don't know in OSX) you can turn OFF the disk platters to save power even further.
Also if Windows is set to server, then the disk will be more heavily cached into memory thus requiring less disk access, which adds to the drive's internal cache and if the drive provides enough cache, then it would suffice the OS and prevent the platters from spinning up and down.

Somehow very disappointed by SSD's...

aec007

But i want to spend my money now!!!!!

HawkSkater0

@ThisIsSharksTerriroty:
I'm with this guy! Other benchmarks have shown SSDs to save energy.

Even if there WAS a hit on energy then laptops aside these give off MUCH less heat then desktop drives. That alone is worth it for me.

JEmlay

I wonder if the increase in power usage is due to the fact that Solid State memory uses much more power to write to than conventional hard drives?

Theophilus P. Wildebeeste

instead of hating on SharkTerriroty why not give him a SSD so his computa dies faster!!

damn O-N buttons need more O-F-F buttons around here

matsayz

@ThisIsSharksTerriroty: people still care about being a first commenter? that's ridiculous.

TonyRockyHorror

@Yeebles: Um, maybe because iPod touches use straight flash, not an SSD?

I personally think the Tom's Hardware testing must be flawed. I don't trust them for any kind of technical information.

ChootinDaChit

@Nakko: LOL, i wish i could afford it...but i would only do it if i had a load of money cuz i know in like 2-3 years the cost will b insignificant (in the sense of SSD costing less not me having suddenly a load of money)...for now i wait
p.s@MagnoliaBoy: thank you.
i honestly hope giz doesn't suddenly become comment Nazis. I mean there is a SMALL place for stupid comments (like mine which I knew was dumb but i was just bein smartass/bored) and rather the community as a whole just ignoring them and moving on instead of ONE pointing it out so repeatedly (which is exactly what an attention whore wants) and TWO suggesting the banhammer which should be a last resort not a first reaction
(i understand that this is in the realm past the slightly off-topic relevant to this article and i accept the consequences but for the next few days I feel conversations relating to this topic are necessary/accepted)

ThisIsSharksTerriroty

I'll throw down the "Yeah, but it's Tom's Hardware, I want to see confirmation from another site" card

bitgod

Technology will improve and the power consumption will go down. SSDs are still in their infancy so I'll cut 'em some slack. Given the choice between SSD or 2.5" HDD I'll take the spinning wonder for now. Now change it around a little and make me decide between an SSD and a 1.8" HDD... I'd take a swift kick in the sack before being shackled to the slow as molasses HDD.

duffyanneal

@Josh_Geyer: you too? I had a lexar 133 silver pro model go err 99(tits up) as the bride and her father got to the top of the asle. That was a tense moment in my life, let me tell you. Been leaning a bit more towards my kingstons since then.

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

So they ban first-post-announcing first posters? Where's the fun in that? Do you want proper, serious discussions to take over the site?

I'd still go for SSDs because of durability and heat -- when it comes to netbooks, but for everything else storage space comes first.

Ragnaroknroll

@Kaiser-Machead's Chips Ahoy!: Hey man, this isnt water!!!

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

but you can't really compare a established design (20 years) like a HD versus something like SSD which is a considerable new product without any optimization that will happen in the coming years. Not to mention, early adopters are the guinea pigs for new stuff and if you buying this stuff already, you already know about 1.0 and 1.1 products...

VakeroRokero

Mwahahahahahahahahhahah

Hahahaha

Ha!

berribrand

RUMOR smashed! well given that high price, SSD development is still in a preliminary stage, guess we'd better wait for a more sophisticated product.

kittenman

To get back to the post:

"SSD manufacturers haven't focused on other power saving principles at this time."

What's amazing is that SSDs perform so close to HDDs without much in the way of efficiency engineering. This suggests that as the market matures, SSDs will evolve to consume less energy. An illuminating example would be to compare a new SSD with a like-new HDD from say, 1984.

Simon

Did anyone read the comments on Tom's Hardware? They pretty much debunk the shoddy testing methods. They ran a benchmark that keeps running at full speed until the battery dies, so the faster SSDs cause the CPU to be under load more (because it's not waiting for data as often as it would with a HDD), and that drains the battery faster.

That's not even close to a real-world scenario unless you keep your laptop at close to full load the entire time it's running. If they were reading and writing to the disk at the same rate with both HDDs and SSDs, the SSDs would win hands-down.

ChoadNamath

Wow, that's pretty disappointing, I just read the article about the cheap SSD drives and got all excited. Now i'm kind of bummed.

Doostin

For now, the SSD is just really robust. No moving parts makes it a winner for travel in my book, but not compared to the cost.

DeadWriter

I would be more interested in a real world test, like someone surfing the web till the battery dies(because that is what most people do all day).

Abnormal

SSDs are useful. We get great results using them to store some databases that get hit with incredibly intense queries. The ROI is actually better in our environment compared to SCSI 15k drives.

chrispr0

Read the comments on Tom's - the tests do not represent a good methodology for proving the battery life.

chrispr0

between this and the news I just got about Santa Claus, today has sucked!

tmed

Meh - I'm not pleased that the industry I work in would blatantly misrepresent a feature of a product (gasp!) but my personal concern is longevity / durability ("I want more life, fucker". If SSDs are less susceptible to damage and wear-n-tear then the cost is worth the price.

archetype94306

@behavin: They already have an "idle" mode. However, "idle" is when nothing is being used and any other time it's fully on using almost peak power. Unless a major breakthrough in the technology happens, no firmware update is going to fix that...it's an inherent problem in the design that can't be properly fixed with hardware code.

geowrian

I'm glad someone finally pointed out the true power consumption of SSDs. They are not the miracle, cure-all product that everyone hypes them as.

Power conservation will come in due time, but the only advantages for the near future are silence and resistance to shock.

HeavyDiaper