Assessing pricey laptop upgrade/replacement

[JHZR2]

Hi,

I have a 2008 Macbook Pro. Runs great. It is heavily used, taken all over the world, etc. Lots of hours on it. It has been rock solid, in a period of time when a Dell of the same age has had everything less the screen and keyboard replaced.

That said, I dont trust HDDs, and per a previous thread about swapping/imaging HDDs, Im considering an SSD. I have one in my 2011 Macbook air, and it is near-instant to load anything, including bootup.

So my considerations are these:

-Keep my 2008 MBP, which has 2.6 GHZ Core 2 Duo processor, 6 MB L2, 4GB DDR2 667 MHz, 512MB DDR3 Geforce 8600 M GT. Replace the 7200 RPM 200GB HDD with a Samsung 830 256 GB SSD for $429. Dont plan on replacement of the actual laptop for the foreseeable future.

-Buy a new MBP in the future at some point in the next year or so, running an i7 at 2.2 or 2.5 GHz, 6-8 MB L3, 8GB DDR3 1333MHz, AMD Radeon HD 6770M 1GB of GDDR5, 250GB SSD Built in. Cost is $3049 if I just priced it straight (e.g. didnt put my own RAM in it, etc.).

The new one would be specced with a 1680x1050 pixel 15.4" display versus mine which is 1440x900.

Let's assume the time to swap HDDs is the same as setting up a new computer to my liking.

So it is a $2500+ difference. Of course, if I bought a good SSD, in the future when I upgraded laptops (I wouldnt plan on doing it anytime soon if I got the replacement HDD), I could go for the cheap HDD option, save $500, and then just reformat and install the SSD into the new computer.

Comparing processor systems, I put together this chart, which compares the top of the line i7 with the MBP i7 and my processor in my curent machine:

My take is that processing is 2-3x faster overall. My 2.6 C2D is fast enough for complex chemical system modeling, running mathcad and similar packages, as well as photo editing. So it may justify taking a cost savings and going with a 2.4 i7 over the 2.5. Would have to see.

Ehhh, decisions... No issues spending $$$ on a new high end machine, mac, lenovo or whatnot else. Im not buying any $600 best buy special with "equivalent" parts, so let that one die on the vine.

So what's the right choice? Thoughts?

 

[OVERKILL]

Buy the best one that meets your needs and that you can afford. It already sounds like you know which one that is.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Buy the best one that meets your needs and that you can afford. It already sounds like you know which one that is.


Unfortunately I dont. I could spec out machines all day long based upon various criteria important to me. I can afford anything I desire.

The reality is that my current machine works fine. HDD to SSD merely buys peace of mind, but never know if some other part might fail shortly thereafter...

SSD would be a durable good, at least for a few years. If laptop fils after that, the SSD should transfer over (with clean install of course). So I see it as lowish risk.

Its more if its worth taking the time to do it, or if my end-game returns on time spent versus something else going bad are not in my favor.

As I said, my machine has been rock solid, and I have no reason to believe that anything (besides the battery) would have a failure or fatigue issue anytime soon.

So Im totally torn...

 

[OVERKILL]

Would anything you do benefit from having the faster CPU in the newer rig?

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Would anything you do benefit from having the faster CPU in the newer rig?


IMO the biggest issue is bloatware that comes along. All the latest firefox, java, flash, fancy parts of websites, etc.

I multitask and multi-surf a LOT. Dont really notice any hanging, but Im sure it would respond marginally faster.

Computational latency on mathematical stuff might benefit a bit. Enough to be worth it? Maybe not. I do routinely use up my 4GB of ram on this stuff though, and OS X is fairly memory-efficient...

So Im seeing marginal benefit besides bloated consumer apps.

The benefit would be in the extra pixels from the higher-res screen... but Im happy with what I have, it would just be a nice to have if ordering a new rig.

Im leaning heavily towards taking my chances with upgrading...

 

[OVERKILL]

Well that's going to be the decision maker. If you can justify needing the better CPU, go with the new rig. If you really can't.... just buy the SSD.

 

[JHZR2]

Yeah, its just like spending $ on an old car though... Even if solid, sometimes the "what if" comes into the process too. Why spend $ if X, Y or Z might happen down the line.

 

[jaj]

I have a Win 7 Lenovo X200 laptop (Core 2 Duo, 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM) with an Intel 160GB SSD in it. It does everything faster than my office computer, or at least it did until I put an Intel 600GB SSD in the office computer (i7, 4 cores, 2.6Ghz, 6GB RAM) about two weeks ago with a clean Win 7 install.

I had to upgrade the office machine - it was getting cobwebs because I used the laptop with a big display plugged in for everything. Now I've switched back to the office machine. The Win 7 performance meter is 7.4 (for CPU speed) and 7.7 to 7.9 for everything else. I've seen, on the Resource Monitor, disk transfer rates up to 300MB per second, around the limit of SATA II.

Based on upgrading two of my boxes with SSD's, I'd suggest that if you're otherwise happy with the current MBP, then buy the biggest SSD you can afford (Intel seems to make the best) and give it a try. It changes everything. If, at that point, you still want more CPU and other performance, pull the SSD and bung it into a new MBP.

By the way, Apple OSX didn't support SSD's until the most recent release. They'd work as an OS, but SSD's need garbage collection(called "TRIM") and the OS has to support it so that the disc management software can function properly.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: jaj

By the way, Apple OSX didn't support SSD's until the most recent release. They'd work as an OS, but SSD's need garbage collection(called "TRIM") and the OS has to support it so that the disc management software can function properly.


Now that's important as Im running OSX 10.5.8. Upgrades are cheap, if that wont bog down the computer too much, I guess it would be necessary...

 

[Y_K]

SSD shall be either Intel or OSZ. Too long to explain, you can google yourself. SSD are still far from being perfect replacement..Good luck.

 

[ueberooo]

I would avoid SSD and get a 1/2 to 1 TB drive, duplicate your partitions, and be done with it. A new drive is unlikely to fail within the 1st few years (but still it is a good idea to make backups of data often).

I would avoid spending too much money on an older laptop, no matter how good it has held up. Eventually things fail that are too costly to repair. My last HP (ze2000z) held up very well until it almost became outdated. Between 5 and 7 years, until finally the power jack degraded badly enough to make it enough of a fire hazard to abandon the computer and upgrade to a dual core laptop (jack was fixed once, but that patch only held up a little over a year). The touchpad was also about done, and the keyboard had been replaced. Had I fixed the issues I'm sure something else would've gone not too far from then, like the HD or screen, or mobo/video.

 

[jaj]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Now that's important as Im running OSX 10.5.8. Upgrades are cheap, if that wont bog down the computer too much, I guess it would be necessary...


"Wise" but not "Necessary" in my view. Apple's been putting SSD's in the Air for a while and it doesn't seem to be a problem. It's just reassuring to get the weekly message that the Intel optimizer ran again.

The optimizer makes sure the workload is evenly distributed throughout the drive's memory array. Running it takes about 15 seconds for a heavily used disk. It deallocates used sectors at the disk controller level so they can eventually be reused. My laptop unit has been in daily use for about 18 months now and it's still showing 100% life remaining.

 

[97prizm]

Honestly there are alot of internet posts of macbooks with ssd failures. Go with a reliable 7200rpm drive. I picked up a 7200rpm Seagate momentus xt hdd for my laptop. it also has 4gb of ssd built in to speed up boot up and other features.

 

[JHZR2]

Thing is, I LOVE the SSD in my MBA, and love the concept of lower energ draw (equals longer battery life on a battery that has lost some of its capacity but is still good).

Since I'm dual boot setup with Windows XP, can I just have TRIM enabled and run when booted under Windows, and then it fix the allocations for both file systems/partitions?

Seems a simple workaround for me.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: 97prizm

Honestly there are alot of internet posts of macbooks with ssd failures. Go with a reliable 7200rpm drive. I picked up a 7200rpm Seagate momentus xt hdd for my laptop. it also has 4gb of ssd built in to speed up boot up and other features.


LOL, you just used "reliable" and "Seagate" in the same paragraph when talking about Notebook drives. They are the drives I see most frequently fail.

In general, an SSD in notebook usage is going to be more durable because it has no moving parts.

 

[jaj]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
...Since I'm dual boot setup with Windows XP, can I just have TRIM enabled and run when booted under Windows...?


I did some digging and it seems that TRIM is not supported by MS O/S's before Win 7, so XP won't help. Apparently full native TRIM support came to OSX in version 10.6.8 and to Windows at Win 7.

 

[JHZR2]

Well, let's say that I install Win 7 on the other partition in boot camp, and then re-set my VM so it all works.

Do you think that enabling TRIM in windows 7 would trim the HFS+ partition for Mac? Or just the NTFS partition?

It seems that TRIM gets info from the OS, so even if I had w7 installed, it would only trim the NTFS partition...

 

[MrHorspwer]

Any reason why you just wouldn't upgrade to OSX 10.7? That would solve your TRIM troubles.

I assume that since you're looking at buying a new MBP, which would ship with the latest version of OSX, that you're not holding on to an older version of OSX on your current machine to support some type of software.

 

[JHZR2]

No, Im not doing anything like that. Updating/upgrading to OSX Lion is viable for $70, particularly if time machine allows me to reinstate my parallels VM, etc.

Id actually consider revamping and going 10.7/W7, but that is more work. My initial hope was just to clone the disc.

 

[jaj]

I checked the Wikipedia entry on TRIM, it looks like it has to be native in the OS for it to work properly. For a rotating disk the OS keeps track of which disk sectors are in use within its file system. When it erases a file, it leaves the file on the disk and just makes a note that the sectors the file used to use are now "free". When new data comes along, the OS looks up the list of free sectors and overwrites the old contents with new data.

In an SSD, used sectors have to be erased before they can be rewritten, which makes for slow write performance if the OS reuses a previously used "free" sector. If the OS knows it's dealing with an SSD, however, it will use the TRIM command to "manually" reset used sectors so they can be reused at full write speed.

So, in summary, upgrading to 10.7 and Win 7 gives you proper native support for SSD's in both operating systems. Having one that supports TRIM and one that doesn't won't solve the problem.