New Macbook SSD put to the test: it makes your Mac snappier, at a price

In light of our recent Intel X25-M SSD review, someone asked me on Facebook what I thought of the Macbook/ Macbook Pro SSD option. To be honest, I have not had an SSD version to play with, but I found Anandtech’s review most interesting. the bottom line is:

The Macbook SSD will cut application loading times in half, but won’t boost application performance.

Huh? This might sound counter-intuitive, but in fact, it’s common with SSDs: they tend to read data a lot faster than they write it, compared to traditional platter-drives. Most “application benchmarks” like photo conversions will write a good chunk of data, thus nullifying the “read” gains.

I think that many people do a lot more reading than writing – that’s my case, at least. The idea of having a faster boot, faster applications load time is a nice one and makes you feel that your computer is twice as fast, believe me! But the price might scare you away. The Macbook Pro SDD upgrade is $500 and it will cost a Macbook owner up to $700 to get one. For the latter, it is obvious that you could save a couple hundred dollars by reading a few reviews and changing the drive yourself (you might want to do that for the memory as well, I just saved $230 by installing 4GB myself in an iMac). Head to Anand’s review, it’s not too geeky for once.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Apple, Top Stories