News - Kingston explains why SSDs are good for netbooks

[HEXUS]

But increasing prices take some of the shine away...for now at least.

Read more.

[Pob255]

Also in the video he's talking about "unlocking the cpu potential of your high end notebook" not a netbook.

While they are great for speed a 30gb high performance SSD is going to add to far too much to the cost of a netbook, which is why most ssd based netbooks use far cheaper lower performance ssd's or a very small capasity higher performance ssd an 2nd larger capasity but lower performance sdd.

[Shooty*]

Um.... is it me, or were the speeds of actually getting INTO windows about the same, and just the "get through all the initial processing rubbish" slower on the spindle drive?

I'm surprised. I was working under the impression that an SSD would leave a mechanical drive standing on a normal boot (i.e. naked, not this artificial 50 document opening thing).

Man, I feel betrayed.

[aidanjt]

There's a difference between education, and propaganda. That, ladies and gentlemen, was propaganda.

There was clearly no difference in boot and login performance worth talking about. And SSDs have sod all capacity so regular and large file copy processes are so far removed from real-world use to be a joke.

If it were me, I would have refused to do that demonstration, I don't know how anyone could be that morally bankrupt. Kingston should have extolled the actual virtues of their 'value'-range SSDs instead of this 54FF artificial barffest.

[miniyazz]

Epic fail, tbh. Far too long to log in. Waiting... waiting... still going.

[HapMcWedge]

I disagree with the boot time comments. If you give Win 7 enough memory the OS boots fairly quickly with SSD or HDD. I've been testing the Intel 80GB drives with laptops in our config lab and seen basically the same thing. We're using 3GB with 7 and the system with the Intel SSD barely beats the HDD system to the desktop. I've seen a number of these SSD boot demos on video and I'm guessing they're running with 1GB of RAM or less to force the OS to page out to the SSD were of course it will be faster than a HDD booting up. I give Kingston props for showing a realistic demo. Regarding the 50 file open thing I say its a good representation of all the things that have to open in systray when you hit the desktop. AV, AntiSpam, power monitor, encryption...etc all these things prevent the user from clicking on his first program while the system loads them all. SSDs blow through those with no problem.

If you want to speed up boot times on a PC then eliminate BIOS like Macs do.

[Shooty*]

I tried that by taking a hammer to my mobo, but then the whole system inexplicably refused to work.

[Funkstar]

If you want to speed up boot times on a PC then eliminate BIOS like Macs do.

of just tune the BIOS to be quicker. My netbook is starting Windows within a couple of seconds of pressing the power button. This can mean several atempts to get into the BIOS setup if you aren't quick.

[HapMcWedge]

of just tune the BIOS to be quicker. My netbook is starting Windows within a couple of seconds of pressing the power button. This can mean several atempts to get into the BIOS setup if you aren't quick.

Yep you're right there, looks like the Thinkpad in the video was running some stuff through BIOS before it even began to boot Windows. What Netbook do you have and what OS are you running that can boot in a couple of seconds?

The point in my reply was that yes faster boots are one thing SSDs can give you but there'e so much more that I've seen up close. My users are fine with how long it takes to get to Windows their main gripe is how long it takes to load all the security agents. AV, user authorization..etc we have. Our tests with SSDs make that process go much faster.

[baius]

of just tune the BIOS to be quicker. My netbook is starting Windows within a couple of seconds of pressing the power button. This can mean several atempts to get into the BIOS setup if you aren't quick.

How? (Please.) (And specs: what OS; what netbook.)

[Funkstar]

My netbook doesn't boot in a couple of seconds, it's starting windows in a couple of seconds. It's a Lenovo IdeaPad S10e.

My desktops on the other hand spend 10-15 seconds running through the BIOS. this isn't something you can do yourself, the system or motherboard manufacturer would have to make changes to the BIOS to speed things up.

There was a Hexus piece recently about a multi threaded BIOS that spent a fraction of the normal time doing its thing, masively reducing boot times on desktop systems.

[daniel_owen_uk]

Surely that's not true?

If you have your HDD set to discover on every boot that's going to slow it down, as will a full memory check.

There are a few things you can do to speed up a bios without the manufacturer.

[Funkstar]

Very true, and having a SATA only system initialises a bit faster than one with IDE devices. However I have never seen a desktop BIOS that completed its initialisation as fast as my netbook or indeed most laptops I've used. This is probably down to there being fewer components and expansion opertunities. So for example on a laptop there often isn't a PCIe bus to look after.

Here is what a BIOS should be like:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/24/v...dows-in-under/

[Shooty*]

Just bought a 40gb kingston upgrade for an HTPC. The main reasons were speed of boot, speed of "full usefullness", and speed of loading MediaBrowser cache.

Will report on how quick it is on all counts.

[dangel]

Just bought a 40gb kingston upgrade for an HTPC. The main reasons were speed of boot, speed of "full usefullness", and speed of loading MediaBrowser cache.

Will report on how quick it is on all counts.

I also found it makes resume near enough instant

It works well, you will feel much love.

[HapMcWedge]

I also found it makes resume near enough instant

It works well, you will feel much love.

You're both right,

coming out of sleep or hibernation is great with SSDs. Also shutdowns too.