I was researching the newer MacBook Pros and options that are available with them. I wondered if there is some consensus on SSD drives (128 gig if that matters).
I'm aware of the price penalty for Apple SSD drives, and there are videos of SSD's as replaced by enthusiasts with latest and greatest drives for benchmarking, etc, but I was looking for information on drives purchased and installed through Apple. My questions:
A) Is there truly a big speed difference compared to other Apple store options?
B) Are the SSD drives more reliable overall? Glitches, performance issues encountered because of the SSD instead of the 5400 RPM drive?
C) Does the SSD option give a boost when running a VM like VirtualBox?
Overall, if there are people who have the 13" unibody MacBook Pros with SSD drives, do you regret the purchase and if so why?
The notebook would be often used on the road, travel, recording some audio/light video editing, system administration work, virtualized machines (Linux and Windows in a VM, probably virtualbox), itunes, and standard work as well (email/web browsing). I was hoping the SSD drive would be an option to extend the laptop life, be more reliable when traveling around and taking light vibration while in it's travel bag, maybe being less sensitive to wear and temperature, etc. It will probably also use FileVault encryption.
EDIT: @Troggy: Thanks for taking time to explain your position (I mean it…often it seems this is overlooked). I was asking this in particular because I was making it very specific to the apple default orders; I didn't want to have to modify the drives themselves, I'm not shopping for top spec hardware to modify it. I wanted to know specifically about the Apple hardware and Apple options so it would be covered under AppleCare, and as such it is kind of a niche question in itself because I didn't want to shop for aftermarket parts. I'm looking at what experience people have with these specific items
Best Answer
AFAIK, Apple's SSD are manufactured by Toshiba, they're no match for high-end aftermarket products such as Intel X-25E, Kingston's E-Series or OCZ Vertex.
SSDs are more reliable and robust than platter hard disk drives as they don't have any moving parts.
The performance of a SSD (even a mediocre one) beats that of the best platter hard disk drives hands down.
And yes, they boost the performance of everything that involves disk operations, even with virtual machines.