Building a Gazelle Pro -- Questions

[MarkID]

Considering a new Gazelle Pro (or two) for work. Both will be used for Skype/video conferencing, etc. One (mine) might also be used for movies, etc. (And, of course, all the other work stuff.) I don't think I need to uograde the processor, but will upgrade RAM. I assume the 95% NTSC screen is worth the upgrade. How about the SSDs? Why do the Crucial SSDs cost more than the comparable Intel SSDs? Are the hybrid drives worth it (more storage, faster boot), or are they something that's has the disadvantages of both? Are HDs on the way out? I'm trying to find the sweet spot in value and, to the greatest extent possible, as well as "future proof" the machine for the next few years.

[Carborundum]

Why do the Crucial SSDs cost more than the comparable Intel SSDs?
They don't:



120 GB Intel 520 Series SATA III 6 Gb/s Solid State Disk Drive ( + $159.00 )
128 GB Crucial M4 Series SATA III 6 Gb/s Solid State Disk Drive ( + $95.00 )



Are the hybrid drives worth it?Hard to say. In terms of performance, hybrid drives tend to be much better than regular HDD, but not quite as good as SSDs. The thing about them that bothers me is that you don't have any control of which files go on the SSD and which go on the HDD. Instead, the controller chip decides this for you, by putting files you access frequently on the SSD. This does seem to work reasonably well in practice, but personally I'm not a fan of not being in control of that myself.


Are HDs on the way out?
As system drives? Yes. In general? No.

[isantop]

As system drives? Yes. In general? No.

I think that they are "on the way out" personally. It will be a long, slow death march for the venerable rotational hard drive, so they definitely won't be obsolete technology within a few years, but they're going. There are very large pushes very high up in the industry for the adoption of SSDs as standard, and that is driving prices lower and lower (average price per GB dropped by about 48% over the last year alone). As the prices get lower, more and more consumers decide to go with SSDs, which in turn lowers prices, and sets the whole system into a sort of feedback loop. On top of that, SSDs are being offered by default on many Apple systems, which makes them more attractive to the industry as a whole. As much as I hate to admit it, Apple are a huge trendsetter in this field.

So I definitely don't think that hard drives are actually going away any time soon. That said, I do think they're on the way out, except for applications where storage capacity is absolutely critical (like in high-volume web servers and such).