

Are SSDs worth the money? - rjstelling
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/2862/4

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mgedmin
As a developer I often have to recursively grep large source trees. With an
HDD that was painful, no matter how much RAM I added to my laptop -- the whole
source tree was rarely cached. With an SSD, I can grep a few hundred megs of
sources in a couple of seconds.

Now I'm someone who _hates_ having to wait unnecessarily, and considers even 1
or 2 seconds of application startup time to be unacceptably slow (hence
Chromium instead of Firefox). For me the expensive Intel SSD was worth the
money.

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prpatel
Yes. If you're a developer, find an SSD with good IOPS performance. You'll
save time/frustration/angst and never want to use a spinner again. Every
single developer I've shown my laptop running an SSD and spinning up
Xcode/eclipse/RubyMine/ Textmate/Rails/Grails/Tomcat/etc has been shocked at
the speed. Once they make they jump, I invariably hear: how did I develop
before this? For recommendations on an SSD, have a look at the Intel SSD's,
the Crucial C300/C400, or the new Sandforce based drives. I had an Intel
X25M-G2 and upgraded to a C300 and loved both.

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deskamess
I got a laptop with an SSD and boot times are really fast. I keep my apps
installed on the SSD drive. I have a second regular HD where I store all
application data.

So the primary benefit I get is fast reboot and start up of apps. The above
was company sponsored laptop but I like it, and I will likely get something
similar for my next personal purchase.

------
Jem
I had my other half buy me an SSD for my laptop for Christmas. I wasn't really
interested in a boost in performance, but the ability to "throw" my laptop
about without worrying about the HDD. With an active, inquisitive toddler
around this has saved me a lot of worry.

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dspillett
Don't most spinning-disk drives intended for portable use have accelerometers
these days so they can pull power from the spindle and park the heads if they
detect sudden movement? Not perfect, but it greatly reduces the chance of
damage due to a throw or a drop.

~~~
Jem
Oh, yes. I am being nought but paranoid, I freely admit to that. :)

~~~
dspillett
There is nothing wrong with a little healthy paranoia!

