Opinions on SSD Drives

The SSD drives that came installed on my laptop, changes the computing experience. Now my desktop is a royal pain, waiting for startup etc. So I am looking at SSD's. I would like opinions on which drives to buy - the Apple 500GB is over $1300. How big of an SSD drive do I need? How best to set things up?

I want to install Lion to run everything, except keep Leopard to run Quicken until I find an alternative personal money software, as Quicken will no longer support Mac it seems.

So questions:

Which SSD?

How to set up / partition?

Alternative personal money management programs you like for Mac?

What about waiting for Thunderbolt drives, will they be a better option to SSD's?

The SSD drives that came installed on my laptop, changes the computing experience. Now my desktop is a royal pain, waiting for startup etc. So I am looking at SSD's. I would like opinions on which drives to buy - the Apple 500GB is over $1300. How big of an SSD drive do I need? How best to set things up?

I want to install Lion to run everything, except keep Leopard to run Quicken until I find an alternative personal money software, as Quicken will no longer support Mac it seems.

So questions:

Which SSD?

How to set up / partition?

Alternative personal money management programs you like for Mac?

What about waiting for Thunderbolt drives, will they be a better option to SSD's?

For 1 OS id say a 256GB SSD would be enough, but since you want to run both Lion and Leopard thats a different story. Although you could run Leopard on a normal disk instead of an SSD. I personally think all > 300GB SSD drives are still too expensive. Im a fan of OCZ myself, and can highly recommend the Vertex 3.

Thunderbolt wont make a difference. SSDs arent fast because of the access bus (SATA right now), but because there are no spinning disk heads that need to seek around on the disk platter. SSDs can instantly find every bit of data, without a mechanical part having to first move to that bit, and then read it. Thunderbolt is more a replacement for external disk access technologies like USB, Firewire and even eSATA.

Im looking at buying an iMac myself, and am looking at a 256GB SSD, and a 2TB HDD, with external Thunderbolt devices for more storage.

I have not set up SSD drives for myself, but have worked some with other computers, so others with more experience should chime in for more info. Basically I have found them to be not really different in terms of set-up of partitions and the rest using Disk Utility. Again I do not have alot of experience with it, so take it with a grain of salt. In terms of size of drive, usually I would go for the largest possible. I would think 256 Gigs though is probably the minimum based on what you think you will want on the machine and cost. I have an Air in the house (11") with 128GBs and it does the job, but there is not alot of software on it. But with what you do, I would guess you would want more real estate.

You mentioned you want to use Snow Leopard still because of Quicken, and not sure if you are looking at a new laptop or just upgrading your existing ones. The new laptops may (with the release of Lion) stop you from putting Snow Leopard on them. Apple has done that before, though with the machines in the pipeline the current machines, you should be probably be able to install SL on them still.

Alternative personal money management programs you like for Mac?

I have tried various programs such listed here Financial Apps

and

iBank

Liquid Ledger (Updated for Lion)

There are some pros and cons. It was a year or two ago and I think there were some issues with tracking costs basis of stocks and/or updating prices which I found a bit awkward to use, and like every software some pros and cons. Many offer free trials, so you may want to check a couple of them out and see which ones do what you need and how difficult it would be to transfer the information over to the new software. Liquid Ledger and iBank I think were the ones I liked the best. I ran into the issue that I was converting from Quicken that I had on an old Windows machine, so that may have made it more of a pain since Quicken (PC) TO Quicken (Mac) was not an easy or complete process and probably where the basis issue came in.

Not sure if you looked at the FAQS Quicken, but they list what the plans are for Lion. I would not hold my breath on waiting for an upgrade for Quicken, but who knows. If they are writing for the iPhone and iPad, seems strange they have not also updated the other products. Maybe they were waiting for Lion?

What about waiting for Thunderbolt drives, will they be a better option to SSD's?

Thunderbolt is the I/O while SSD is the drive itself. So not sure if you are comparing apples to apples here? (I am still drinking the morning coffee, so maybe missed something.)

The SSD drives that came installed on my laptop, changes the computing experience. Now my desktop is a royal pain, waiting for startup etc. So I am looking at SSD's. I would like opinions on which drives to buy - the Apple 500GB is over $1300. How big of an SSD drive do I need? How best to set things up?

I want to install Lion to run everything, except keep Leopard to run Quicken until I find an alternative personal money software, as Quicken will no longer support Mac it seems.

So questions:

Which SSD?

How to set up / partition?

Alternative personal money management programs you like for Mac?

What about waiting for Thunderbolt drives, will they be a better option to SSD's?

I have a 256 Apple SSD in my iMac and it is MUCH faster than my other iMac without one (but not a pure apples to apples comparison). It was a bit annoying to set up as the OS wants to put all your information, pictures, documents, etc on that SSD. I have my documents and pictures on the 1TB hard drive (way too big for even a 500 GB SSD), but I put all the applications on the SSD (application data on standard HD). If you can squeeze a lot onto the SSD all the better, but I'll have to wait for 1TB SSDs, lol.

Ok, I should probably start to state that I am not a MAC guy :-)

If you take a little bit of care of your SSD, moving the junk ( downloads, documents etc) every now and then. Then it is fine with a relatively small SSD.

For a Desktop, there is no need to put in a big SSD. The major gain of a SSD is to have the Operating System running on it.

On my SSD, 128GB, I have for an example Windows 7, Photoshop, Lightroom ( +Katalog) and all the "normal" programs on it.

All in all it requires something like 50-60GB. If you have double the amount of that, you should be on the safe side.

The Photos you need to put on a good ol' Harddisk anyway, unless you "need" to burn money.

2 OS on 1 Machine:

Asking for trouble :-) Avoid it, if you can.

Partitioning:

I would assume that the MAC-OS would take care of that itself, Windows does nowadays.

/Erik

Thanks folks for the answers; plan to order a 256GB OCZ, seems it gets good reviews.

Vertex 3 is da Bomb! Just make sure your interface is SATA 6gbps and it'll fly!

Vertex 3 is da Bomb! Just make sure your interface is SATA 6gbps and it'll fly!

From what I can tell looking at my system SATA link speed, appears to be 3gbit. My MacPro is 2008, and I see the Apple SSD drive is only for McPros from 2009 onwards.

Does this mean that none of the SSD drives will work?

It'll work but buying a SATAIII won't make much of a difference if at all. I suggest Vertex 2 unless you're going to upgrade soon. Otherwise there'll be SATA4 or whatever is coming next.