[kilolima]

Hi all,

My first 1012 was dead on arrival so they're sending another one, eventually, but I wanted to ask about anyone's experience with an SSD drive :

1. Does the machine boot faster? (XP or win 7) And how about from hibernate?

2. Is there a noticeable increase in battery life?

cheers,

kilolima

[reflex]

First off, sorry about the late reply.

I don't know about a SSD in the 1012 specifically, but I've been happy with the SSD in my Desktop. It's faster than the fast hard drive it replaced, and that was already a fast drive.

[reflex]

I installed a SSD in my 1012. Here are my early impressions.

Power consumption seems slightly reduced, judging by my Kill-A-Watt's reading. I haven't tested battery life, yet. I expect a small improvement.

As for performance and boottime (in Linux anyway), I attached some typical bootcharts for the stock 160GB 5400rpm HDD and a slow SATA SSD (SuperTalent FUM16GL18H, 16GB).

The first two are CPU and drive IO for the HDD. Notice that the CPU spends several seconds at the beginning just waiting for file reads, then actual CPU utilization begins. In the second pair of graphs, the CPU spends virtually no time waiting for IO, and the SSD looks virtually idle. With a SSD installed, the slow Atom CPU is the bottleneck when booting.

[vickoxy]

I have another question. What size/format are Dell Mini 1012 and 1018 using? 2" or 1.8"?

[rrfranczak3]

Originally Posted by vickoxy

I have another question. What size/format are Dell Mini 1012 and 1018 using? 2" or 1.8"?

the 1012's and the 1018's use a standard 2.5" SATA drive

[Max1012]

I upgraded mine to 2GB RAM and installed a 64GB Sumsung 470-series SSD. This is one FAST drive, and pretty inexpensive compared to others. Mine will cold boot into Windows 7 Pro in 8 seconds, open MS Office apps in 1/2 second, and feel faster than most Core2 Duo laptops on most tasks. Could not be happier with this drive, highly recommended!!!

[OllyT]

Just upgraded my 1012v to a 64Gb Crucial SSD and Linux Mint 11. Even with the stock 1Gb of memory this machine is now flying!

I was running XP and wouldn't bother again - Mint has all I need and more from a Netbook.

[untold]

I used a generic 64gig SSD drive from microcenter and not only does it work faster than the original it uses less power!

[sebgros]

Originally Posted by Max1012

I upgraded mine to 2GB RAM and installed a 64GB Sumsung 470-series SSD. This is one FAST drive, and pretty inexpensive compared to others. Mine will cold boot into Windows 7 Pro in 8 seconds, open MS Office apps in 1/2 second, and feel faster than most Core2 Duo laptops on most tasks. Could not be happier with this drive, highly recommended!!!

I ve got a 10v with 2GB and a V40 intel SSD and I m very far from booting seven in 8 sec, more like a min.or maybe you call 'cold boot' hibernation? in that case 10sec is fine for me..

I m sure the SSD is fast enough cause I installed it in my desktop and it s not slower (at least not noticeable) than a Crucial M4

what are the differences between a 1012 and a 10v to explain such a huge improvement? can you tell me what is the score of your SSD on the windows performance tool? my SSD is 5,5 (but the cpu is 2,2)

I once installed ubuntu and could boot in 15sec but the general use of the OS was not that much better than seven...

[Max1012]

My overall WEI is 2.3 (obviously, the Atom N450). However, the Samsung 470-series SSD has a WEI of 7.5. This is a new generation of SSD with a controller chip designed by Samsung to match their flash chips. I can definitely feel that 7.5 when using the system as well. I can't run games on the Atom, but using the system feels like a Core2 Duo...really. I should post a video or something in the future. And yes, a cold boot means turning the system on from a complete shutoff.

It's not the speed of the processor, but the overall throughput of the system and its subsystems. I remember years ago using SGI systems with 300 MHz processors and running rings around systems with 5X the processor clock...they were designed with total throughput in mind. Most Windows PC tasks are disk-bound (processor sitting idle 90% of the time), so that's where I concentrated on with the 1012.

Imageshack - weimax1012.jpg