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Nergol · Nov 6, 2010, 08:12 PM

Hey all;

So let me start by saying that I'm a grad student with VERY limited money.

I'm also the owner of a first-generation white Intel Macbook Core Duo. I've upgraded it a bit - maxed out the RAM to 2GB and installed a 160GB hard drive. It's not cutting edge anymore, but I don't do a lot of video or photo editing and I'm not a gamer, so it's still plenty powerful for just about anything I need.

That said, I'd always like some more speed, and some shock resistance too (I carry my machine back and forth to the library to write a lot). So when I saw that Amazon is offering a 128GB Kingston SSDNow V Series for $190, it really got my attention. I've heard that SSDs speed up performance quite noticeably, and that battery life is better too, and of course there's the issue of not having any moving parts to break. The loss of 40GB of drive space wouldn't be a big issue for me, as I have an external drive for media and such.

But $200 is a significant amount of money for me as my life stands right now. So I have two options: upgrade with the SSD and try to keep my current MacBook going another year or two, or put the money aside in my "get a new Macbook, eventually" fund (getting a new one is at least a year away, realistically, no matter what I do).

So what do you guys think? How much would the SSD really boost performance? Is it worth it, or should I put the money in the new MacBook kitty? What's my best option?

Thanks!

AKcrab · Nov 6, 2010, 08:29 PM

I would put my $ in the MacBook kitty.

QuadG5Man · Nov 6, 2010, 09:07 PM

Buy the SSD now and put it in your current macbook! Even with a Core Duo, which I've owned, the SSD will make the computer feel like new, especially if you don't immediately need an advanced processor or GPU.

Thank yourself two years from now by buying the new Macbook that will perform like today's Mac Pro.

mduell · Nov 6, 2010, 10:03 PM

You must be swapping so brutally now a good SSD would be a nice performance increase. Not as good as a new computer with decent RAM, but better than a pokey hard drive.

amazing · Nov 7, 2010, 04:03 PM

A compromise would be to get a larger, faster regular HD. They're pretty cheap nowadays, you should check the prices at zipzoomfly.com or buy.com. for example, a 7200 rpm HD...

You'll get a speed increase for a more modest price, and when you do move to a more modern laptop, you can put the larger HD in a USB enclosure...and use it for backup.

Won't be as fast as SSD but it will allow you to feel good about the laptop until you move to something faster.

l008com · Nov 7, 2010, 04:48 PM

$200 for 2 more years doesn't seem logical. I would save for a new machine. And just make sure you are fully backed up with time machine, so if your old drive does fail, you can replace it nice and easy and fast.

AKcrab · Nov 7, 2010, 05:45 PM

It's a Core Duo, with 2GB of RAM...

I really don't think a SSD (or a 7200rpm drive) is going to do much for him.

l008com · Nov 7, 2010, 05:46 PM

It will "feel" snappier because apps will launch so much faster. But when it comes to the overall speed of DOING things, there won't be much difference. I always just put 7200 RPM drives in my laptops. You can get a 500 GB 7200 RPM drive from newegg for $75. BUT with a laptop that old, I'd just put the $75 into the new-mac-fund.

P · Nov 7, 2010, 07:05 PM

Hard question. That SSD is not the fastest around, but it would certainly help with things like app launching and paging in and out. What would really help is more RAM, but as you say, that's not possible.

One alternative, if $200 is a little much: The Seagate Momentus XT. It's a regular HD with a large (4GB) SSD cache. It's not as fast as an SSD - it's more like a good desktop HD - but it can be had for under $100 for the smaller versions and it is going to be way faster than your current drive.

What do you do with the computer?

CharlesS · Nov 7, 2010, 10:16 PM

One thing to note is that the Core Duo MacBook is a 32-bit machine. We don't know Lion's system requirements yet (AFAIK), but knowing Apple, it'll either require a 64-bit processor, or the next update will. Saving for a new computer might be a good idea if you like to keep on top of the latest OS X releases.

Third party software, too, may start tending to become 64-bit-only in the future, since there are a lot of ease-of-development features in the new Objective-C runtime that are only available in 64-bit mode.

P · Nov 8, 2010, 07:49 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

One thing to note is that the Core Duo MacBook is a 32-bit machine. We don't know Lion's system requirements yet (AFAIK), but knowing Apple, it'll either require a 64-bit processor, or the next update will. Saving for a new computer might be a good idea if you like to keep on top of the latest OS X releases.

Don't worry. They only deprecate one thing per OS version, and I'm pretty sure that Rosetta is what goes in 10.7

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Third party software, too, may start tending to become 64-bit-only in the future, since there are a lot of ease-of-development features in the new Objective-C runtime that are only available in 64-bit mode.

Did not know that. Interesting.

Nergol · Nov 8, 2010, 03:02 PM

I've also heard the opinion that I should wait for OSX TRIM support in 10.6.5 or 10.6.6.

In response to questions:

1) I don't use my machine for very "heavy" tasks. I'm not a gamer, I don't do any serious photo or video editing, and most of my video collection is not HD.

2) I leave most of my content on a 1TB external drive that holds my iTunes library, videos, and pictures, as well as my Time Machine backups. Because of this, a big internal drive would be something of a waste for me. I've had a 160GB drive installed for a year and a half now, and I've never come even remotely close to filling it up.

So what do you all think of that?