Tom’s Hardware is running a review of solid state drives that compares the latest generation of SSDs against current mechanical drive technology. It’s little surprise that SSDs are in general faster than hard drives. What I found surprising is that some SSDs actually require more power than hard drives. Not the newer crop, though. Even the least efficient SSD has better performance-per-watt numbers than the most efficient hard drive. And the OCZ SATA II is very impressive.
Solid state drives are still very expensive, though. The 64 gigabyte OCZ SATA II will cost you about $17 per gigabyte. That’s the high end. Typical SSD prices are in the $10 per gigabyte range. That’s a whole lot more than you’ll pay for a mechanical hard drive. You can pick up a 320 Gb notebook drive for $110–less than 30 cents per gigabyte. It’s nice to know that SSD is coming along, but it’ll be a year or two before I can justify replacing my notebook’s hard drive.
If you’re interested in using Windows Server 2008 as a workstation operating system, you should visit win2008workstation.com. But be careful. The site has a lot of good information, but there’s a large hacker/cracker component that sees nothing wrong with sharing component files. I wouldn’t trust downloading anything pointed to by forum posts.
If you’re in the market for a “dual core” laptop, be careful. Intel made a “Core Duo” line of processors which is in effect two Pentium M processors on one die. These are 32-bit processors. You probably want a machine that has a “Core 2 Duo” processor–a 64-bit part. I can’t see any reason why a typical user would want to buy a machine with a 32-bit processor.
Also on the subject of laptop computers, don’t assume that you’re getting the best price by buying on eBay. I compared prices for Dell laptops on eBay and at Dell Outlet The outlet prices compare quite favorably with eBay, the only drawback being that you’ll have to pay sales tax if you buy from Dell. Still, I found plenty of eBay sales where the buyer paid more than what he would have paid at the outlet–including tax. Do your research.
