There are quite a few models in the market. Amazon has some 256 GB SSds for less than 200 Euros.

This one for example: MZ-7TD250BW, SSD 840 250 GB.

What do you think of them? It seems they use Samsung own controller. Price/MB is quite good.

They're quick, affordable, and Samsung has a long history making decent flash memory products. Should be good.

The Dell XPS 13 "ultrabook" I just ordered apparently has an mSATA SSD by Samsung inside it. All reports are that it's no laggard for performance.

Cheers

The 840 is apparently a slight step backwards compared to the 830. There is an 840 Pro.

That said, basically any modern SSD will provide a massive improvement over a mechanical drive mainly due to the basically instant access times compared to milliseconds.

I have an 830 and I have noticed some slow down in particular on my Downloads folder recently when opening it. Not sure what's going on there and I don't really have any evidence to specifically point towards the SSD.

When I first installed (Windows 7 x64), it was lightning fast. Reboots were stupid quick but I'll also admit I'm not as careful about what I install lately, so a re-install might clear all that up.

Also when installing I had to make sure I had the right SATA drivers for my laptop. Without them performance was good but not as good as it is now.

I assume you have a mechanical drive as well for data storage? I'm not saying that's where your downloads folder is mapped, but recently I've noticed something odd on my own Windows 7 installation. When I do certain things, I can hear one of my disks spinning up, and I can tell that the computer is waiting for it to do so before it completes the action. It does this for weird stuff like emptying the recycle bin or opening Notepad. I have no idea why.

I don't have an SSD for my main drive, but I do have one of those WD Raptor drives, which is pretty fast. Regardless, I'm not sure why my computer feels the need to spin up a dormant drive for such trivial stuff that should all be in the main drive anyway...

I'll put it this way. I absolutely despise most of Samsung due to how they run their business as a cheap clone shop. And I run a Samsung 830 SSD in my main machine. Their SSD business is one of the few divisions I'm willing to buy stuff from, and currently are my go to vendor for SSD drives (previously Intel). The seem to work great in any machine, under Windows, OS X or Linux.

I still won't go anywhere near a SanForce controller, hence my change from Intel to Samsung. Intel started using SanForce, and had some similar problems to other vendors using them. I know many people have them and are happy, I just don't trust them.

I am eyeing the new lineup of Crucial/Micron SSDs, for the price. With any new SSD controller though, I take a wait and see approach. SSD tech is getting better, but still has some problems from time to time. I waited on the Samsung SSDs for a bit before trusting one.


Nope. I had a Raptor (two actually, 300 then 600GB) as my main system drive. It was the king of the slow hill (horse and carriage style tech). Transitioning to an SSD for the system drive is a huge leap up. If you can find a bit of spare cash next computer upgrade time, go for the SSD even as a replacement for a Raptor.

I've been trusting Intel only at work. Based on your feedback also, I'll consider some Samsung units. Thank you guys!

No - single drive in a laptop. I replaced the mechanical drive (but was considering replacing the optical drive with the original 750GB mechanical unit rather than carrying it separately in an enclosure). The symptoms are similar though to a drive spinning up.

I've been using a 500GB 840 Series SSD in my MacBook Pro for a little over a month now. Previously, I had an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 128GB SSD in this machine and I don't see any difference in speed. I was expecting a slight decrease in speed with the Samsung, but SSDs are so damn fast that I can't tell a difference.

The long-term life of the 840 non-Pros are in question due to the memory chips used. The last review I read said it would take the average user 20 years to put enough data through it to wear it out. I don't expect this drive to be in active use after even 5 years, so I feel safe.

The 840 certainly has a big price advantage, and it's from a well-know brand of SSD manufacturers. I say go for it.

I love my Samsung 830 in my Mac. As others have noted, it just works and is a dramatic performance increase.

A 250GB Samsung 840 (see first post above, from Amazon.it) is on its way to my office. I'll let you know. I'll be most likely testing it on a Lenovo X200 laptop, 2 years old at least now. I have an 80GB Intel SSD in it now, which worked flawlessly for a year at least.

The oversized netbook arrived today: Lite-On SSD instead of Samsung. I guess only the official "reviewers" got Samsung drives.

Fast, but we'll see how it behaves over time once I finish copying it to another device in prep for a full wipe of that MS stuff it came with.

Cheers

That is disappointing...

I'm not disappointed.. the Lite-On drives use Marvell controller chips, which IMHO are the best ones in existence. Very fast, very trouble free. What one finds inside a Crucial M4 drive, for example. And maybe also in the new M5(?). As well as in some of the Intel SSDs.

Cheers

SSD in my work laptop right now. All find so far, after few hours of standard office usage. I seem to notice a general speed increase, but that may simply be due to the fact that previous SSD in my laptop was an older Intel X25 with less than 1GB free out of 80GB total.