So many laptops in the $700 - $800 range still come with a 500 gb or 1 tb drive

Forums › Laptops and mobile computers › So many laptops in the $700 - $800 range still come with a 500 gb or 1 tb drive - not a SSD

amiga500

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#247970 5-Mar-2019 16:31

For starters every laptop intended for school use should have eMMc or SSD so they have some chance of survival in the classroom.

However, it's the number of laptops right up to around $800.00 that come with a 500 gb or 1 tb spinning hard drive that really puzzle me. Every one of these modestly specified machines would run infinitely better with a real 128 or 240 gb ssd. People who buy these would be far better off to buy a laptop with a small SSD and either a portable hard drive or a couple of good quality flash drives.

I've lost the link to it but I read an interesting article about how the majority of business users only use about a quarter of their hard drive so a SSD would make sense for them as well.

In part I base these ideas on my 'user experience' of having a Windows 10 installation on a 1 tb 2.5 inch Seagate drive. While it has a good 128 mb cache it's painfully slow loading windows compared to a SSD.

While 2019 won't be the year of Linux mass adoption, 2019 might be the year when almost all laptops come with some type of SSD/eMMc hard drive?

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Networkn
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#2191429 5-Mar-2019 16:34

Your expectations seem unrealistic to me.

mattwnz

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#2191442 5-Mar-2019 17:05

That is why they are in the 700-800 price range, which his cheap for a laptop. I would have thought they could be upgraded to a SSD. People want more space than just 128GB or 256GB of diskspace. Also 128GB is not large enough over time for an SSD on windows. I used one for a while and only used it for software installs, and it kept running low. I have heard with SSDs, that it is good to leave a lot of spare space on them.

amiga500

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#2191446 5-Mar-2019 17:23

networkn:

Your expectations seem unrealistic to me.

In the article, which I have unfortunately lost the link to, it mentioned that SSD mass adoption in laptops might happen when the cost of manufacture falls below that of a 2.5 inch laptop drive which is apparently somewhere around US $40.00. When you look at the price of SSDs on Newegg or Amazon they have dropped in price massively. There is really no way that conventional spinning hard drives can be made more cheaply.

Also, when I looked at one or two Youtube videos on manufacture of hard drives it really emphasised what a huge investment must go into the set up of a hard drive manufacturing plant.

Obviously there is still going to be a big market for the conventional hard drives above the 1 tb size.

amiga500

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#2191448 5-Mar-2019 17:30

mattwnz:

That is why they are in the 700-800 price range, which his cheap for a laptop. I would have thought they could be upgraded to a SSD. People want more space than just 128GB or 256GB of diskspace. Also 128GB is not large enough over time for an SSD on windows. I used one for a while and only used it for software installs, and it kept running low. I have heard with SSDs, that it is good to leave a lot of spare space on them.

Yes, most of what I download I put onto my 1 tb Seagate / flash drives and keep the SSD pretty empty. About a year ago I had a 240 gb SSD fail and I foolishly replaced it with 128 gb thinking it would be big enough!

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#2191450 5-Mar-2019 17:36

amiga500:

For starters every laptop intended for school use should have eMMc or SSD so they have some chance of survival in the classroom.

However, it's the number of laptops right up to around $800.00 that come with a 500 gb or 1 tb spinning hard drive that really puzzle me. ...

Yes, SSDs are faster, drain less power, and are more shock-proof, but ... anything smaller than 500MB will fill up very quickly, and ....

A 1TB SSD costs about $800. This would double the price of a typical school laptop. 🤕

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MadEngineer

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#2191451 5-Mar-2019 17:43

$800 for a 1tb ssd? You’re dreamin mate https://www.amazon.com/slp/1tb-internal-ssd/4zg2kmuok3rf7oy

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Tzoi

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#2191452 5-Mar-2019 17:45

PB had a 1tb 860 evo for $170 or so in the weekend

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Gurezaemon

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#2191462 5-Mar-2019 18:00

I suspect a lot of this is the manufacturer understanding that a lot of people won't have a clue what an SSD is, and are instead swayed by numbers.

Many people will see 2 laptops for comparable price, one with a 128GB SSD drive and another with a 1TB spinning drive, and go "1TB is bigger than 128, so that must be better."

amiga500

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#2191466 5-Mar-2019 18:14

Gurezaemon:

I suspect a lot of this is the manufacturer understanding that a lot of people won't have a clue what an SSD is, and are instead swayed by numbers.

Many people will see 2 laptops for comparable price, one with a 128GB SSD drive and another with a 1TB spinning drive, and go "1TB is bigger than 128, so that must be better."

Exactly what the writer of that article said!

mattwnz

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#2191485 5-Mar-2019 18:25

Gurezaemon:

I suspect a lot of this is the manufacturer understanding that a lot of people won't have a clue what an SSD is, and are instead swayed by numbers.

Many people will see 2 laptops for comparable price, one with a 128GB SSD drive and another with a 1TB spinning drive, and go "1TB is bigger than 128, so that must be better."

That will be it. Even if they could get a 256 GB one into the budget, 1TB still looks better than 512GB. Plus I suspect they have a lot of old stock of spinning HDs to get rid of, so they can buy them cheap at quantity.

k1w1k1d

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#2191489 5-Mar-2019 18:37

Our Windows 10 family PC has been running for a few years with a 128GD SSD and has 83.8GB used. That includes 12.2GB of photos, 3.8GB of videos, and 3.7GB of Documents.

Not sure what I would do with 1TB? Probably accumulate heaps of junk?

If I bought a cheapish laptop I would get a SSD installed, and put the original drive in a portable USB case for backups.

Davy

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#2191492 5-Mar-2019 18:44

It's not the end of the world if their laptop comes with a 128GB SSD - school kids tend to save files in the cloud these days (usually Google docs) and so they don't fill up as fast as they do for us old folks!

I'd be more concerned with getting RAM up to at least 8GB rather than the 4GB that I am seeing a lot these days.

shk292

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#2191497 5-Mar-2019 18:48

Sort of agree about the SSD

But for me, the number of laptops well over $1000 even $1500 that have a 1366x768 screen is just staggering.

richms

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#2191511 5-Mar-2019 19:07

Im shocked at the number that come with obsolete graphics chipsets, obsolete sata connected ssds, and a screen that looks more at home as a makeup mirror with ultra low res screens - its bad enough that things got dumbed down to 1080p on most of them, but im seeing ones that make the one in my 10+ year old dell look good in comparison.

Richard rich.ms

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#2191520 5-Mar-2019 19:24

MadEngineer: $800 for a 1tb ssd? You’re dreamin mate ...

Sorry - my bad - i bought this 2TB [not 1TB] SSD last week from PB Tech for $885.48 - Samsung 860 Pro MZ-76P2T0BW 2TB

Definitely not suitable for a school laptop ... 😗

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