Comments on: Analyst: Returns, technical problems high with flash-based notebooks

Almost one-third of flash-based notebooks being shipped are being returned, says Avi Cohen of Avian Securities. Dell agrees there are problems.

[Harlan879]

makes no sense

Why would flash slow down video streaming? Video streaming is, I suspect, almost entirely done in RAM, with only occasional chunks dropped into non-volatile storage. And flash is vastly faster than spinning disks with read arms. Flash has issues with modifying existing data, but I don't see why streaming video would trigger that limitation.

[Penguinisto]

It does, partially...

IIRC, Internet Explorer (by default anyway) drops a temp copy of the stream into a temp folder, which would explain the HDD access.

/P

[k2dave]

Some sense

From the column and extrapolating it seems like the problem is that the flash drive reads/write at a certain constant speed no matter it is in memory. A harddrive will read write faster when the memory is sequential (as the arm doesn't have to move and the disk spins really fast), but takes longer during random access.

Or to put it another way (and the numbers are just made up), lets say you want to write 1 mb of data sequentially, it may take a harddrive 2 milliseconds, a flashdrive 10ms. If you want to write it randomally it may take the harddrive 50 ms but the flashdrive will still take 10 ms.

Again this is my take from how the artical is phrased.

[mikerpalmer]

Thinkpad X300

I have had my X300 for a couple of weeks now and have no problems with speed or reliability (knock on wood). Outlook 2007 is MUCH faster with my SSD than a regular HD (I had a Thinkpad T61)

[Jahntassa]

Be a little more broad please.

The tone of this article says to me that ALL notebooks that have flash drives have problems. However I don't believe that to be the case.

It seems to me that Dell is having problems with Samsung drives.

My Boss's Sony VAIO with a flash drive in it is much faster than a system with a standard drive. Also, look up a review at Anandtech concerning the MTRON 2.5" drives and look at the huge speed differences between the MTRON SSD and Samsung standard and hybrid drives.

Flash is Fast. However not all flash is the same, and according to Anandtech, the chipset also matters in speed.

I know this is just a blog, but this just seemed to be too broad to me.

[Imalittleteapot]

Yeah, well you'll have that.

Well that's technology for you.

There isn?t any reason to market an SSD to a home user or put it in a laptop yet. They haven?t reached their promised potential according to this article. Vista made the same mistake. It?s good for things users don?t need, and bad for things they do. Yet again, someone forgot who they were selling the product to.

Most people need lots of slow drive space to store meaningless crap. People that need high disk performance are probably running some type of server. That probably means not a laptop. There is no such thing as someone who doesn?t need lots of disk space. Starting over the gigabyte count isn?t going to melt my heart.

Speed wise they?re like Superman vs. Flash. I don?t care which one is faster. They?re both fast enough for me. As for reliability, most home users get a new computer long before the drive goes bad anyway. At work, I?d rather have a few cheap hard drives on hand in case something crashes because eventually something crashes.

I can get a terabyte of storage for $200, and my computer is plenty fast. How is a 64 gig drive SSD supposed to compete with that?

If you need speed then add more RAM, get a dedicate GPU, and clean install. That?s still going to be true for a long time. You?ll get more speed out that then you will an SSD.

Perhaps if a server requires super man like access times, but I don?t work with any such computer and I never have. I?ll let someone else answer that.

Right now the only difference I can see is the price. So, I hope they work on that. I won?t be having one in my system for a while. I do however hope to see one in everyone else?s system. Once market saturation hits, I?ll get one on eBay cheap.

[tompmac]

Sounds vendor specific

Based on the other posts, this appears to be a Dell-specific
architecture issue with running a flash drive.

My very brief experience with the MacBook Air a few weeks ago
showed that the system shutdown time is much slower for the
flash drive than the hard drive configuration, but bootup time is
substantially faster, and starting up apps is also much faster for
the flash drive. Overall, the flash drive version was speedier.

It would be nice to hear from a real flash drive MacBook Air user
to see what their experience has been.

[shingwong2]

Agree about vendor specific

From what I understand SLC should be good for 100k cycles, so unless Samsung is not doing a good job in its wear leveling algorithm they should fail so quickly.

Then again, Samsung's memory is not as good as Toshiba's. Micron and Intel is even worse, and Hynix is still stuck in 70nm that it won't make any money selling high capacity stuff like SSD.

If you think it is bad right now, the wear problem in MLC SSD is going to be even worse. Hopefully the controllers and algorithms will mature before it is sold everwhere.

[cool_enyr01]

successful entrepreneurs

wow is it! thats cool..
______________________
elsphit
A team of successful entrepreneurs credited for www.SelectWealthSystem.com
A new home-based-business marketing system that provides the strategic high ground for internet marketing.
Pro Team Marketing uses an automated marketing system that is currently promoting a cutting-edge young company, entering the early growth stage, that targets the largest consumer base in the United States with their financial educational products.
http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com

[cool_enyr01]

ohh

ohh realy how come.
_______________
elsphit
http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com%3c/a>