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I think I want to buy a new laptop computer. Can anyone here provide advice, or suggestions on where to look?
The laptop I want to replace is a Dell Latitude D620. Its main issues are weight, heat production, slowness (though probably in part from software issues), inability to sleep or hibernate (buying and installing a new copy of XP might fix this), lack of an HDMI port, and deteriorated battery life. I briefly tried an Inspiron i14z-4000sLV, but it was still kind of slow, and trying to use Windows 8 without a touchscreen was annoying.
I remember reading that it's unsafe to move or jostle a laptop with a magnetic hard drive while it's running, because of the moving parts. Based on that, it seems like it's best to get one with only a solid-state drive and no magnetic drive. Is that accurate?
I'm somewhat ambivalent about how to trade off power against heat and weight, or against cost of replacement if it's lost or damaged.
(Edit: I eventually ordered a Dell XPS 13.)
What's your budget?
How much hard drive space are you using currently?
I'd rather not worry about budget.
Not counting external storage, I'm using about 25 GB of the D620's 38 GB, plus 25 GB (not counting software) on the family desktop PC.
(After ordering the XPS, I realized that it doesn't have a removeable battery, which seems like a longevity issue; but it seems likely that that's standard for devices of its weight class.)
Not necessarily. Most laptops nowadays are equipped with anti shock hard drive mounts and the hard drives are specially designed to be resistant to shock. The advantages for an SSD are speed, not reliability.
This reliability report (with this caveat) indicates that Samsung is the most reliable brand on the market for now. I've always considered Lenovo and ASUS to be high quality, with ASUS generally having cheaper and more powerful computers (and a trade off in actually figuring out which one you want, that website is terrible).
I would expect an SSD to be MUCH more reliable than a hard drive.
SSDs are solid-state devices with no moving parts. Hard drives are mechanical devices with platters rapidly rotating at microscopic tolerances.
So now that I've declared my prior let's see if there's data... :-)
"From the data I've seen, client SSD annual failure rates under warranty tend to be around 1.5%, while HDDs are near 5%," Chien said. (where Chien is "an SSD and storage analyst with IHS's Electronics & Media division") Source
Reliability for SSDs is better than for HDD. However, they aren't so much more reliable that it alters best practices for important data keeping -- at least two backups, and one off site.
Oh, certainly.
Safety of your data involves considerably more than the reliability of your storage devices. SSDs won't help you if your laptop gets stolen or if, say, your power supply goes berserk and fries everything within reach.
Thanks for replying. I haven't looked at your link yet, but it seems like there'd be limits to how much shock protection could be fit in an ultrathin laptop, and it'd be hard to find out how good it is for specific models. (And the speed advantage seems like enough reason to want an SSD in any case.)
Check out /r/suggestalaptop?
General comments: SSDs are generally faster than magnetic drives, but often fail much sooner.
If you're not positive you want to replace it altogether: You might be able to fix your heat/slowness issues just by taking a can of compressed air to it. And you could probably buy a new battery. Replacing it might still be a better proposition overall, though...
Source on SSDs failing sooner? I thought (or assumed) it was the opposite. A quick Google search turns up the headline "SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5%".
Looking further, though, I also see: "An SSD failure typically goes like this: One minute it's working, the next second it's bricked.". The page goes on to say that there's a service that can reliably recover the data from a dead drive, but that seems like a privacy concern (if everything on the drive weren't logged by the NSA to begin with).
On the pro-SSD side, though, I try to keep anything important online or on an external drive anyway (for easier moving between devices). And I really like the idea of a laptop I can casually carry around without worrying about platters and heads.
Thanks for the suggestions; I may try the Reddit link later. (Edit: posted a thread here.)
If you are backing up your data responsibly, the SSD failure isn't as much of an issue. And if you aren't backing up your data, then you need to take care of that before worrying about storage failure.
Update: I've provisionally ordered a Dell XPS 13.