There is actually a great deal of variation in the memory chips used in the SSDs. Some are very fast/power efficient and expensive while others are much slower/less efficient and much cheaper. Accordingly the SSD manufactures try and get a mix which keeps the price to something reasonable but performance is reasonable. This is pretty much why the battery life and cost is about the same. In regard to the life expectancy of the drive, it will be much more resilient against impacts and general physical abuse which is good, but there is a catch. Flash memory gets slightly damaged each time it is written to. There's a variety of mechanisms within the drive which do a lot to mitigate this problem but ultimately its what will probably kill the drive. From most of what I read, it seems that the SSds will last about as long as a standard HD which doesn't encounter any sever physical traumas.
As far as that two partitions thing, I suspect it has to do with the memory quality issue I mentioned before. I'm guessing that the 8GB section is composed of the expensive fast memory so that things which are access frequently such as the OS and applications load really fast, and then the 32 GB section will be slower and can be used for general data storage. Hope the bit of extra info helps in your decision. ____________________________ Sean O'Connor http://seanoc.com P.S. Never run a swap partition on a SSD. Swap partitions are generally write intensive and will rapidly wear down the drive. On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Matthias Johnson < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have finally saved up enough cash to buy one of these and was hoping for > a > little direction. There are several flavors of them and I was likely going > to purchase it from Newegg (unless someone knows of a better deal...) > Here are the options I see: > > ASUS Eee PC 1000 Linux based Intel Atom 10.0" Wide SVGA 1GB Memory 40GB SSD > Integrated Graphics Retail $669 free ship > > ASUS Eee PC 1000H XP based Intel Atom 10.0" Wide SVGA 1GB Memory 80GB HDD > Integrated Graphics Eee PC - Retail $549 > > OK so this is were I am debating. I understand the SSD should be faster > and > the life expectancy of the drive may be better. Also by getting the > Xandros > I would be contributing to a demand for Linux based machine rather than XP. > But the catch is I would probably wipe Xandros anyway and put a different > distro on it. Also I am confused with SSD and the regular drive. They > both > specify that the battery life is the same and that doesn't seem correct to > me. Tom's Hardware seems to indicate that you lose more power with a SSD. > Also the SSD appears to be a faster 8 GB SSD and a slower 32 GB SSD. I am > guessing it it a RAID 0 or maybe two seperate partitions. I cannot find > the > specs on the 1000 SSD but I had thoughts of getting the 1000H and > installing > a SSD later when the market for them matures. I am not sure if I can > upgrade the 1000 version since it is two drives. I guess the 1000H is what > I am leaning towards but any input would be greatly appreciated. Also if > anyone has a 1000 and would like to bring it to this next meeting so I can > see it that would be awesome. The real bummer is that the two versions > seem > to be very near in price in other places like EU so that seems to indicate > that Microsoft is subsidizing costs on the 1000H. > > > Matthias > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium > Jun 4 - Sqeak! and eToys > Jul 2 - KVM (Tenative) > Aug 6 - Zenos > Sep 3 - TBD > _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Jun 4 - Sqeak! and eToys Jul 2 - KVM (Tenative) Aug 6 - Zenos Sep 3 - TBD
