Hi

I just updated my 2.5 year old Core i5 laptop and older Samsung N110 Intel Atom netbook with Samsung 840 SSD's.
The difference is amazing. Much more so on the laptop. Boots up in 30 seconds and applications open in seconds.
The netbook is restricted by the limited processor. I also added a 2GB memory upgrade. I wanted to keep the netbook for taking planetary avi's and running PhD guiding. The SSD was probably overkill for a SATA 1 drive motherboard-but it does make a noticable improvement. Boots up quickly and apps open again in a few seconds. Hopefully with the upgrades it wont hang up as much. For the cost of the upgrade I probably could have bought a new one - but it works well and runs XP which I need for my camera.Netbooks are hard to find these days. If it breaks I can always use the SSD in another computer. The cloning software with the Samsung SSD is really easy to use and worked flawlwssly on both XP and Windows 7. They come with a 5 and 3 year warranty depending on the model you chose. I got the 256 GB Pro version for my laptop and the cheaper 120GB standard for the netbook.
Highly recommended for that "better than new" computer performance.

Thanks for that John, once the price of these becomes comparable to HDDs, it'll become the norm. and the end for HDD's.

I've been looking at the Samsung solid state hard drives lately.
Good to hear that the cloning software is very good.
That was one of my main concerns.

michaeloconnell wrote:

I've been looking at the Samsung solid state hard drives lately.
Good to hear that the cloning software is very good.
That was one of my main concerns.

No issues with the cloning. I'm a complete novice when it comes to IT issues. I used a hard disk holder to USB connector to the SSD and activated the software. It takes a while to complete. Remove the old HDD and insert the SSD. Turn it on and its just as you left it (programs, favourites, logins, desktop etc) only much much faster.

John
What's the difference between the standard and the pro versions apart from the price?

michaeloconnell wrote:

John
What's the difference between the standard and the pro versions apart from the price?

Stated write times are ~3 times faster on the pro versions.

Unless you have SATA III I would stick with the standard 840 SSD drive-wont see any great improvement. There is a 5 year limited warranty though as opposed to 3.

Thanks lads.

I also upgraded to Windows 8 today which speeds thing up a bit further. The user interface sucks the first time you use it. Looking forward to the return of the START key. It is very fast though. Stellarium opens in 2 seconds.

johnomahony wrote:

I also upgraded to Windows 8 today which speeds thing up a bit further. The user interface sucks the first time you use it. Looking forward to the return of the START key. It is very fast though. Stellarium opens in 2 seconds.

You can get the start key back through some 3rd party tools. Start8 is the one I use, $4.99 but worth it to save be cursing constantly at the laptop. There are other tools and registry hacks out there to disable some of the other annoyances.

www.techradar.com/news/software/operatin...ve-windows-8-1131737

Windows 8.1, The return of the start button

Marto wrote:

Windows 8.1, The return of the start button

"The big headline news is that the Start button has returned to Windows 8 with Windows 8.1, although it still goes to the Start screen rather than the Start menu. "

Well that's a bit useless.

I just upgraded to windows 8 today myself - have the 8.1 preview running. I've had to force it to load to desktop view, add my computer icon and customise the start screen up a bit. The OS is very good, fast and has some good features. It will take me time to adjust to the new metro ui though and the os does kind of force it on you.

Also looking at the samsung evo solid state drives, i would like the 256gb model which performs very similar to the pro model but about 60 euro cheaper.

Yep. Would never go back to an ordinary hard drive now except for back ups. Win 8 boots up really fast and have had no issues with it over the past few months. The non-pro Samsung should be fine if you are using SATA 2. With SATA 3 you would see the extra speed of the Pro version.

Does the non pro version come with software to copy hard drives?

Yes, mine did. It can also be easily downloaded from the Samsung site. Worked well for the two drives I installed.

www.samsung.com/global/business/semicond...ngssd/downloads.html

Just chiming in here, I typically stick to two manufacturers of Solid State drives, Corsair and Plextor, I stay away from OCZ and Samsumg as a rule, I have known people have major issues with both.

Corsair give darn good performance and so do plextor, in my work laptop I bought a Plextor 256Gb SSD that does 100k IOPS, people quite often make a mistake of how much MB/Sec it can do, I am in the storage side of virtualization and I am the Global Tech lead for a product in VMware called Virtual SAN, so I have to look at SSD performance very critically, it's all about the IOPS and not MB/Sec, this will determine how your SSD Will perform.

The new drives have a much lower failure rate, and one thing you should always remember is never to repeatedly fill up your SSD to the Max, they have a max number of writes before they start to fail, the newer 3rd and 4th generation SSD's have a higher lifetime capacity, typically 25 times the 2nd generation

If you are considering an SSD drive, feel free to drop me a PM, I'll give you free advice

I usually buy all of my gear from Scan Computers in the UK, I have known the owner for almost 20 years like, and I have been into IT for almost as long

Simon