Laptop buying advice forum: netbook -SSD important feature? Best netbook?

The biggest disadvantage is the price. Solid state costs are at leasyt 10 times the cost of a regular hard drive but prices are dropping. SSD drive use less power and run cooler. SSD are flash memory like your USB jump drives that are internal to your machine. Eventually SSD will replace todays hard drives because of the advantages I listed above. Right now you can get a 500 Gig Hard Drive for 100.00 and a 250 gid SSD drive will be over 800.00.

32 gig SSD VS 500 gig HHD. I don't know what the form factor of the Netbook hard drives entail. I was under the impression they were of the 1.8 in. VS the 2.5 in. of regular Notebook size. If you back up important files and don't bump it too hard while it is working a regular drive should be the way to go.

I'd recommend the Acer Aspire One with Linpus. It doesn't have any standout features, but it has a really good keyboard and trackpad, an 8gb SSD, and it's very quick to boot. It's easy to use as well.

Acer seems to have broken their version of Linpus so it won't allow new software to be installed; or, at least, mine had a broken package management system. I installed Ubuntu on it instead. If you find that you want programs that aren't on the preinstalled Linpus, and you have the same trouble that I did, rest assured that Ubuntu 8.10 works well on the Aspire One.

Don't install Windows XP. It has not been built for SSDs; it will give you poor performance and will accelerate the wear of your SSD. That's why all the Windows netbooks have hard disks.

I'm not trying to argue, but how does an SSD wear out? My understanding is that since there are no moving parts their lifespan is incredibly long. Does constantly writing and re-writing data cause harm?

You're failing to take something into consideration. Most people use netbooks for very simple tasksnamely, surfing the Net and email. They're not designed to be anyone's main PC.

For this you don't need a 500-gig hard drive, any more than you need a big display, a quad-core processor, or a gaming video card (which is why netbooks don't have those things, and why they're so cheap).

Here on my desktop PC, which I've been using for several months now, my full system partition (including Windows 7 and its many files) has come in at just under 20 GB. I understand that Windows 7 even keeps copies of app installation files there---and I will have installed lots of apps I'd never need, or think of using, on a netbook.

For these reasons, I wouldn't hesitate to get a netbook with an SSD. The SSD's speed would also help compensate for the netbook's pokey CPU.

As for SSD's wearing out---it's hysteria. All hardware eventually wears out, even hardware with no moving parts (because of heat). But from all the research I've done, I've no doubt my desktop's SSD will be perking away long after I've replaced the spinning hard drives. Besides, who cares about keeping and using a netbook---or any PC, for that matter---for 6 or 7 years? Hardware and software change so quickly, it'll be like driving a Model T by then. (You may even be laughed at in public.)

Obviously, if you plan to load up your netbook with 100 GB of videos and MP3s, you wouldn't be considering one with an SSD anyway. So stop worrying. SSDs are great.

One experience is not enough to judge an entire field. And you got an HP, not exactly tops for QC.

I purchased a Dell with a 250 SSD running 64 bit Windows Vista, and it run great....

parts it can be read faster and if the OS is installed on it there will also be faster boot times.