Toshiba Begins Selling MacBook Air SSD 162
Lucas123 writes "Toshiba has made the solid state drive used in the new MacBook Air generally available for use by equipment manufacturers. At just 2.2mm thick, the company said the drive represents a new form factor that is about one-third the thickness of a thin hard disk drive and that is 42% smaller than even a mini-SATA SSD module. The new Blade X-gale SSD series has a maximum throughput of 220MB/sec. and can store up to 256GB of data."
Re:SSD's are awesome, but the cost... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SSD's are awesome, but the cost... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And now you can have a superior PC for $500 les (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm no fanboy, I own nothing Apple but my iPod Touch, but while the PC may be cheaper, you also have viruses/malware, antivirus software, nothing close to iLife, and it sure as hell is not as nicely made or durable. When you factor in those things the premium is worth it IMO. I've been a system builder for over 15 years so believe me it's hard for me to say it, but it's true. The tipping point is if/when your income and time become more valuable than a bunch of variety that never quite work seamlessly.
Re:And now you can have a superior PC for $500 les (Score:3, Insightful)
If you honestly believe windows is more secure then, I don't know what to tell you.
I do a ton of photo work and iPhoto has a ton of features that no other program I have used has or has as elegantly or usable. Sorry. (and I play guitar and enjoy the simplicity of Garageband since I'm not a pro, I don't own a Mac but that is something I would dig.)
HP Envy is essentially the same price as a MBP and very close in hardware at those prices.
Most of the tech you mentioned is for benchmarks or gaming on a home PC. Not average userland. The MBP and iMacs play modern games just fine and have perfectly normal GPUs. I'm not a hardcore gamer and a NV 9600GT is in my PC.
Windows 7 is a massive improvement and I love it. It is still terribly flawed in usability. OSX shines there. Sure, you have to do it their way but that is the tradeoff. I'd love to see Meego or Ubuntu Unity really take off.
Like I said initially, you are arguing with the wrong person. I'm not a fanboy. I use what is best for the job at hand. I have no problem admitting some things Apple does drive me damn insane, they also get some things really right. None are perfect, use what you like. However, your assessment of Macs and Apple are horribly tainted and in some cases wrong. But that's fine, you are entitled to your opinion.
Re:And now you can have a superior PC for $500 les (Score:3, Insightful)
If you honestly believe windows is more secure then, I don't know what to tell you.
It's been accepted now by security experts (not so-called geeks spouting the same FUD since 1999) for a good year or two now. Go look it up. Also, there are a lot of new security technologies in place that OSX doesn't have.
Just because you keep saying it does not make it true. You have made the same assertion four times now without a single link. You mentioned Secunia who would not even make a statement like that. Link someone, anyone that is a mildly credible security expert.
Re:And now you can have a superior PC for $500 les (Score:3, Insightful)
Same form factor, are you high? Seriously?
Is 2-7 times thicker depending where you measure. (1.5" - .8" for Lenovo, .68" to .11" for MBA) .59lbs is quite a bit of weight in this class.
The Lenovo machine has Intel graphics.
They do not even offer an SSD in their standard builds...It would cost you 1259 to build a machine with an i3, 2GB RAM, intel graphics and 128GB SSD. So there is no price advantage.
If it works like every other Lenovo laptop I have seen (and I have witnessed this happen to 3 and seen the aftermath on 6 or 7 more) picking it up by one of the front corners will snap the plastic.
Re:And now you can have a superior PC for $500 les (Score:3, Insightful)
I wont even jump into security (at the end of the day, a platform that has more attacks and is slightly more secure may still net to be more vulnerable than one that has less security and less attacks.)
I will say due to experience (that I posted in another point off this conversation) that macs seem to be extremely durable.
HP, Toshiba, Acer and Asus computers I have worked with have proven to be disapointingly breakable. I have not worked with a Sony laptop nor talked in person with anyone that has, so I can't comment on those. I had a Thinkpad Lenovo from work that was very durable. Overall that one was a worthwille machine, but also had a chasis that made it feel as if I was moving national secrets in the thing, it was bulky and square. Looking at it made me think the thing should had been bulletproof. But has been one of the few pc laptops that didn't overheat nor did it break by father time winking at it. Macs, so far, have been extremely durable.
I do hate the magnetic power cord in the mac-minis. It's too easy to unplug it while poping in a USB drive and unlike laptops, the thing has no battery.
iLife is not a thing I would buy a mac for, but it's a nice thing to have. I find Picasa has a better face recognition than iPhoto, but that's about it. iPhoto has a lot of cooler features. iWeb is amazingly easy to use, my wife has made cool looking webpages in the thing and she is the type that attempts to align text in Word by spamming spaces at the left of certain words! iMovie kicks Windows Movie Maker's ass all the way to the stratosphere. Window's offering is just an afterthought. iMovie is a blissful experience in video editing.
As for usability, well, my wife has not asked me once how to do anything on the Mac since she got it (well other than the few apps she think she can install but gets the windows version by accident, something she has slowly learned to avoid, can't wait for the Apple App Store for Mac.) Despite having used windows for much longer, she still constantly bugs me to help her with this or that when she works on a PC. So yea, I'd say Apple has managed to make Mac OS X very usable. Exception: iTunes syncing, although I find it easy she has a hard time trying to sync music into her iPod.
BTW, on the Unity thing, how come Ubuntu is jumping into Unity if it's considered alpha software? I am guessing it is not really as crude as you take it to be.