ordered my christmas present today ;-)

[wizard10000]

I wanted a netbook with a bit more processor and a bigger screen, so I bought an off-lease Dell Latitude D430 laptop from Dell Financial Services.

SHP-12467362 2ZF9QG1 $258.00 DELL LATITUDE D430, CORE 2 DUO (U7700) 1.33 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HDD, DVD, 12.1-IN SCREEN,

The hard drive will be replaced by my 60gb SSD, I gained two inches of screen size, a slightly faster processor with a second core and an external DVD burner. I've got an Intel a/b/g/n wireless card that will replace the g card that's in there and what I should end up with is a slightly beefier netbook with a 12" screen and an external DVD burner

I think this makes good financial sense - a 12" dual core Atom netbook would have been $200 more than the Dell mini-laptop, the Core 2 Duo should outperform an Atom and I got an external DVD burner to boot

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

Sounds good. Nice early Christmas present.

[wizard10000]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

Yeah, except I may be stuck with the slow mechanical hard drive. A D430 uses a 1.8" PATA drive, so the best I can do is buy a 1.8" PATA SSD. We'll see whether it's an issue once I get the thing

[SteveRiley]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

After kitting my HP Mini with an SSD, and also receiving one with my employer-issued laptop, I don't think I could ever go back to spinning disks. The difference is phenomenal.

[wizard10000]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

After kitting my HP Mini with an SSD, and also receiving one with my employer-issued laptop, I don't think I could ever go back to spinning disks. The difference is phenomenal.

I did learn not to bother spending a lot of money on a netbook SSD - they only do 1.5 Gbps SATA

I found several 1.8" PATA SSDs so I think when I get done with this project jt'll make a nice replacement for my Atom netbook.

[dibl]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

I did learn not to bother spending a lot of money on a netbook SSD - they only do 1.5 Gbps SATA

I dunno if that is universally true -- I can't find a spec* on that for my Toshiba NB205. Be that as it may, there are other reasons to love an SSD. My Toshiba found a way to fall on the floor again yesterday -- second or third time since I installed the SSD. No worries with an SSD ...




* EDIT: says here that the Tosh NB205 has a SATA-300 contoller interface, which according to Wikipedia is the 300 MB/s (burst) speed.

* EDIT #2: nope, mine is an NB205-310, not a -210, so mine has the SATA-150 controller interface. Oh well -- it's still really fast. I don't do much file transferring with it anyway.

[woodsmoke]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

Sounds like a nice rig, and we will ALL be wondering how well it suits your needs! Merry early Christmas!

woodsmoke

[wizard10000]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

Sounds like a nice rig, and we will ALL be wondering how well it suits your needs! Merry early Christmas!

Nah - the spousal unit is dead set against me opening the thing before Christmas

She still reminds me of the netbook she bought me two years ago (and which I'm typing from now). I knew I was getting the netbook because I ordered it - I bought a 2GB DIMM and sneaked it into the netbook before she wrapped it and put it under the tree - I'd have got away with it if I hadn't Facebooked about it some months later

I did go ahead and buy a 64gb PATA SSD for the thing.

[wizard10000]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

* EDIT #2: nope, mine is an NB205-310, not a -210, so mine has the SATA-150 controller interface. Oh well -- it's still really fast. I don't do much file transferring with it anyway.

It does irritate me a little that the bottleneck on my netbook is the SATA controller, not the SSD

edit: Also, I believe cnet is incorrect. The ICH7 I/O controller only supports 3 Gbps SATA in desktop models. The mobile version of the chipset only does 1.5Gbps SATA. See

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/...datasheet.html

It's on page 191 of the ~850-page datasheet.

[SteveRiley]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

I did learn not to bother spending a lot of money on a netbook SSD - they only do 1.5 Gbps SATA

I think I paid $100 or so for a 60 GB drive. Even though my Mini's interface is indeed only 1.5 Gbps, it sure feels like there's a speed-up compared to spinning disks. The SSD-equipped also runs cooler and consumes less power.

[wizard10000]

Re: ordered my christmas present today ;-)

I think I paid $100 or so for a 60 GB drive. Even though my Mini's interface is indeed only 1.5 Gbps, it sure feels like there's a speed-up compared to spinning disks. The SSD-equipped also runs cooler and consumes less power.

I don't think I expressed myself real clearly there

I didn't mean "don't buy an SSD", I meant there's no reason to buy one with an astronomical transfer rate. The SSD in my netbook will do 300mbps but the interface will only do less than half that. The lower seek times still make the SSD worthwhile