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View Full Version : where did the netbooks with SSD go?



earthpigg
February 28th, 2010, 10:40 AM
what was once the standard issue is now not.

once upon a time, SSD netbooks where the standard, and you had to pay extra to upgrade to a 'traditional' hard drive.

the opposite seems to be true now: traditional hard drive is standard, pay extra for the SSD.

is this just win7, or are there other things i am missing?

gnomeuser
February 28th, 2010, 11:02 AM
Unfortunately as the impression of netbooks shifted from being a special purpose device to "merely a small laptop" the move from SSD to HDD was implied. People like their laptops with lots of storage and cheap SSDs simply aren't big enough.

I suspect a secondary issue might be that SSD models had cheap components in them and fraught with problems because of it. They weren't entirely reliable.

SSDs were originally used and promoted as savng power and this has turned out to be a mixed bag. They were faster for the originally intended purpose but for a laptop they do suffer from both wearing but also a slow down for a number of use cases.

Largely I suspect this can all be pinned to the netbook vendors not investing sufficiently in providing the specialized Linux they originally shipped. They didn't make it attractive and they skimped on shipping codec support. As such Windows XP was a more attractive base for users, with that comes the impression that it is just another laptop and thus the need to store more data on the device.

Now once ChromeOS comes out you will see more netbooks with SSD in them, Google requires SSD to be certified to run their OS. The technology should also have grown more solid.

blueshiftoverwatch
February 28th, 2010, 11:34 AM
SSDs were originally used and promoted as savng power and this has turned out to be a mixed bag. They were faster for the originally intended purpose but for a laptop they do suffer from both wearing but also a slow down for a number of use cases...Now once ChromeOS comes out you will see more netbooks with SSD in them, Google requires SSD to be certified to run their OS. The technology should also have grown more solid.
As of right now, SSD's are only good for a minimum of 100,000 writes before they start to wear out and a maximum of 1,000,000. How long do you think before they get the technology to where the transistors last long enough (about 5 years) to be of practical use in your average computer?

howlingmadhowie
February 28th, 2010, 12:03 PM
i think it has something to do with joe average seeing "16GB SSD or 250GB hard drive" and thinking "mm, the 250gig hard drive is more than 10 times better. I'll get that". The notion that an SSD could increase system responsiveness or reduce power consumption is unknown to joe average, so these had no effect in selling the systems.

gnomeuser
February 28th, 2010, 12:04 PM
As of right now, SSD's are only good for a minimum of 100,000 writes before they start to wear out and a maximum of 1,000,000. How long do you think before they get the technology to where the transistors last long enough (about 5 years) to be of practical use in your average computer?

Well, I'm an optimist when it comes to SSDs. The industry is investing heavily in the technology so I expect progress to be rapid. Additionally the growing dependency on a Home NAS and cloud storage works in favor of them, as we move more and more data to centralized solutions the wear on the local storage will become dramatically reduced.

The consumers of storage are also increasingly becoming good candidates for SSDs, the upcoming wealth of tablets and ereaders e.g. would very likely have SSDs. The upcoming ARM netbooks and nettops have all been demoed with SSDs (as these are conceptually much closer to the original idea of netbooks and nettops this makes sense).

I believe that power savings will become sufficient to sell them as a "green" alternative, it is also quiet and very durable. Combined with the increased read performance this would seem to be a good sell for a number of devices.

2 years sounds good to me, as for a regular desktop I think the progression will likely be to hybrid solutions. You might want a few gigs of flash which the system can use intelligently to cache files needed for boot, shutdown, starting of frequently used applications and storing frequently read files. These haven't caught on in the past for a number of reasons, but I know that Intel are aiming to push this feature onto motherboards. It would not be unlikely that we will see this in most desktops in the next couple of years.

howlingmadhowie
February 28th, 2010, 12:04 PM
As of right now, SSD's are only good for a minimum of 100,000 writes before they start to wear out and a maximum of 1,000,000. How long do you think before they get the technology to where the transistors last long enough (about 5 years) to be of practical use in your average computer?

all SSDs i know of have wear-leveling algorithms, so this isn't a problem.

gn2
February 28th, 2010, 01:59 PM
The original SSD netbooks had very small capacity SSDs which had very poor performance and would hang during writes.

Modern better performance and decent sized SSDs are too expensive for netbooks.

3rdalbum
February 28th, 2010, 02:39 PM
The original SSD netbooks had very small capacity SSDs which had very poor performance and would hang during writes.

Modern better performance and decent sized SSDs are too expensive for netbooks.

+1

My god, those netbook SSDs were horrible. My newer Aspire One with a hard disk is slightly slower to boot, but so much quicker to actually use.

gnomeuser
February 28th, 2010, 03:06 PM
The original SSD netbooks had very small capacity SSDs which had very poor performance and would hang during writes.

Modern better performance and decent sized SSDs are too expensive for netbooks.

That is true but for a netbook as they were originally intended capacity isn't so important. I wager you could get away with 6 gigs. You basically just need space for the OS and what few files you would be working on.

That being said you are definitely right that the available SSDs today are to expensive for netbooks, I was looking at a 40 gig Intel SSD today and it is roughly half the price of my netbook. I would love one but it seems like a big investment for a machine in that price range.

A fairly fast, cheap below 10 gig SSD would be perfect but I simply cannot find any on the market.

spikyjt
February 28th, 2010, 03:15 PM
Dell still sell them http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&l=en&cs=ukdhs1&kc=&oc=N00B1001 they're cheap and come with Ubuntu Hardy installed. I've got three on my network. They are very popular with the users. They boot and run very fast and the screen is fantastic. I put Kubuntu 9.10 on instead of the pre-installed. All the hardware works out of the box, except for the Broadcom WiFi, but that's just a case of activating the STA driver in Jockey and rebooting. Buy lots and show them that we still want SSDs and netbooks and Ubuntu :) (I don't work for Dell and there may be others that are still selling netbooks with SSDs and Linux, but I couldn't find them).

Kai69
February 28th, 2010, 03:57 PM
You need to think about what people save on the HDD, I have a 320gb HDD my video folder has 32gb pictures 18gb etc SSDs are better for mobile storage but the cost is way out of most peoples pockets. I can get a 500gb HDD for £50 SDD £1000 thats way out of my range but when the costs come down Ill get one.

gnomeuser
February 28th, 2010, 04:33 PM
You need to think about what people save on the HDD, I have a 320gb HDD my video folder has 32gb pictures 18gb etc SSDs are better for mobile storage but the cost is way out of most peoples pockets. I can get a 500gb HDD for £50 SDD £1000 thats way out of my range but when the costs come down Ill get one.

The original idea of netbooks was exactly that instead of storing those 32gigs of photos you would have them in a far more useful place such as Flickr or Picassa.

You wouldn't need hundreds of gigs, it was for light computing. for your web presence on the go, facebook, chatting, playing small flash games. Doing minimal wordprocessing, surfing.

Hence the original designs had fairly small SSDs. It is only after vendors started selling the majority of netbooks with Windows XP that we saw a move to harddrives. Originally e.g. the Linux version of the Acer Aspire One had a smaller SSD while the Windows version came with more ram and a harddrive.

The original netbook idea is largely gone now and projects such as the netbook remix, moblin and ChromeOS are now trying to reinvent it. The Netbook remix is a really nice take on the same idea we saw in the original Eee interface, I have always had a soft spot for the Eee interface. It was nice, simple and very friendly. Not terrible integrated with the web but Moblin is taking that idea and running with it. ChromeOS as we know made it the only idea. Which will turn out best time will tell.

snowpine
February 28th, 2010, 04:40 PM
On a similar tangent, what happened to the original idea of the $199 netbook? I keep seeing these $500 monstrosities with HD video and gigantic hard drives. I want a cheap little guy with no moving parts that's good for checking my email! (Well actually I already have it in my Mini 9, which Dell has discontinued :()

gnomeuser
February 28th, 2010, 05:45 PM
On a similar tangent, what happened to the original idea of the $199 netbook? I keep seeing these $500 monstrosities with HD video and gigantic hard drives. I want a cheap little guy with no moving parts that's good for checking my email! (Well actually I already have it in my Mini 9, which Dell has discontinued :()

The ARM people have some rather impressive reference designs to this effect. They also have some very neat nettop setups, sadly though none of these have made it to market yet for some reason.

These designs to me seem to capture what netbooks are all about, light portable little machines for doing work on the road. They have excellent battery life, no moving parts and yet still a surprising amount of computing power hidden within. So I am really hoping to see them soon, I would happily shell out for one.

My current Eee PC 1002HA is very nice but the battery life leaves a lot to be desired, I get maybe 2-2½ hours from it. I would like to take it with me to town, sit at cafe and write, do research all afternoon without having to recharge. If it could use my phones 3G connection that would be great as well but I suspect that would require power sucking bluetooth and for me to root my HTC Hero.

spikyjt
February 28th, 2010, 05:52 PM
On a similar tangent, what happened to the original idea of the $199 netbook? I keep seeing these $500 monstrosities with HD video and gigantic hard drives. I want a cheap little guy with no moving parts that's good for checking my email! (Well actually I already have it in my Mini 9, which Dell has discontinued :()

But they still have the Mini 10v - with a Linux version. Not many left doing that.

MaxIBoy
February 28th, 2010, 06:35 PM
Never, EVER buy a computer that comes with an "SSD." You are probably going to get something with a JMicron or Samsung controller, and that's going to give you worse-than-HDD performance under most circumstances.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=7
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=8

You should have it come with the cheapest hard drive they offer, then replace it with an Intel SSD.

snowpine
February 28th, 2010, 07:06 PM
Never, EVER buy a computer that comes with an "SSD." You are probably going to get something with a JMicron or Samsung controller, and that's going to give you worse-than-HDD performance under most circumstances.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=7
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=8

You should have it come with the cheapest hard drive they offer, then replace it with an Intel SSD.

You are assuming that all netbook users care about performance. :) I don't really care if my Mini is a little slow... and an Intel SSD would cost more than the netbook itself, not a good investment.

snowpine
February 28th, 2010, 07:08 PM
But they still have the Mini 10v - with a Linux version. Not many left doing that.

I hear good things about the 10v, but it does not have an SSD. :(

spikyjt
February 28th, 2010, 07:12 PM
I hear good things about the 10v, but it does not have an SSD. :(
The one I linked to does. I have three of them. The problem is that Dell do not have it on their site through the normal navigation menus. The link (again) is:
http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&l=en&cs=ukdhs1&kc=&oc=N00B1001
They are still selling them, with an 8GB or 16GB SSD and Ubuntu, but they do not promote, they say because there was not enough demand. I think there was pressure from MS, during negotiations for Win 7 prices. As I said in my previous post, if we want these things, we need to get buying them, to show the manufacturers there is demand.

spikyjt
February 28th, 2010, 07:14 PM
Never, EVER buy a computer that comes with an "SSD." You are probably going to get something with a JMicron or Samsung controller, and that's going to give you worse-than-HDD performance under most circumstances.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=7
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=8

You should have it come with the cheapest hard drive they offer, then replace it with an Intel SSD.
My Mini 10Vs come with an SSD and they are definitely quicker than the ones with HDDs. With no flash disk trickery or optimisation.

snowpine
February 28th, 2010, 07:21 PM
The one I linked to does. I have three of them. The problem is that Dell do not have it on their site through the normal navigation menus. The link (again) is:
http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&l=en&cs=ukdhs1&kc=&oc=N00B1001
They are still selling them, with an 8GB or 16GB SSD and Ubuntu, but they do not promote, they say because there was not enough demand. I think there was pressure from MS, during negotiations for Win 7 prices. As I said in my previous post, if we want these things, we need to get buying them, to show the manufacturers there is demand.

You're right, I didn't see the option on the Dell USA page until I looked harder. :)

My Mini 9 came with 8gb SSD and Ubuntu 8.04 preinstalled. I actually bought it specifically because I was dissatisfied with my Asus eee 900ha with 160gb HDD and Windows XP (I still have the eee but basically only use it for watching Netflix On Demand). Even though I did not keep the pre-installed "Dellbuntu" 8.04, I still felt as though I was doing the right thing by voting with my wallet.

Firestem4
February 28th, 2010, 07:34 PM
As of right now, SSD's are only good for a minimum of 100,000 writes before they start to wear out and a maximum of 1,000,000. How long do you think before they get the technology to where the transistors last long enough (about 5 years) to be of practical use in your average computer?

Source for this information? And what is a "Write", is it 1 bit, is it 1byte? even if so, that means you're going to exceed that 100,000 write mark fairly quickly, before you can even write enough data to fill these small (32gb) SSD's...

The last reports that i've read coming from the industry claim that average-use cases put SSD viability at around 7 years of lifetime. I don't know what that is in terms of actual statistics but its nowhere near as low as 100,000 writes.

Also one of the other issues with SSD's is that ALL modern File Systems and Storage Based technology were designed with Conventional hard disks in mind. There is a significant loss of performance and increased overhead incurred trying to write to physical sectors where there are none. This translation is done in firmware, but we shouldn't have this translation at all. When SSD's are ubiquitous obviously things will change.

Malakai
February 28th, 2010, 09:36 PM
8gb hard drives were big fail. Actual usably sized high performance SSD's are cost prohibitive to netbooks (and desktops for many of us).
You could always buy one aftermarket and install it yourself, they can be made to fit in laptops and some netbooks (would req research into specific netbooks & such but it's possible!).

I still cannot afford SSDs and am fine on my regular old hdd's. My short-sroked Western Digital 640GB Black works quite well for it's cost, and with the s-s I still have more space to work with than most SSDs, and you can always sac a bit of extra performance for more space. But I do not find that necessary with 1tb+ drives around 80 bucks

earthpigg
February 28th, 2010, 09:43 PM
8gb hard drives were big fail. Actual usably sized high performance SSD's are cost prohibitive to netbooks (and desktops for many of us).

i <3 my mini 9 with it's 8gb ssd.

and 8gb is plenty usable, assuming one is connected to the internet. my netbook with it's 8gb hard drive holds 200gb of music and movies (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1314970), for example.

Kai69
February 28th, 2010, 11:31 PM
i <3 my mini 9 with it's 8gb ssd.

and 8gb is plenty usable, assuming one is connected to the internet. my netbook with it's 8gb hard drive holds 200gb of music and movies (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1314970), for example.

How did you manage to cram 200GB into 8GB?????:confused:
Sorry my bad didnt see the link, I dont like the idea of leaving my files on the net and never used ubuntu one.

gnomeuser
February 28th, 2010, 11:43 PM
How did you manage to cram 200GB into 8GB?????:confused:
Sorry my bad didnt see the link, I dont like the idea of leaving my files on the net and never used ubuntu one.

They aren't on the net nor is he using Ubuntu One. He has he desktop running at home, then he mounts the directories using sshfs. Meaning the data is stored on his own hardware and made available over an ssh connection with high security.

Kai69
February 28th, 2010, 11:54 PM
They aren't on the net nor is he using Ubuntu One. He has he desktop running at home, then he mounts the directories using sshfs. Meaning the data is stored on his own hardware and made available over an ssh connection with high security.

Sorry my bad I understand now :oops: