Acer flings forth SSD-booting, HDD-data-storing laptop
Two-drive TravelMate inbound
Acer has built both an SSD and a hard drive into its latest laptop, the 13in TravelMate 8481.
Pick one up and you get 320GB of magnetic storage for data and such, but the 8481 also has a 64GB mSata form-factor SSD to quick-load the OS and your apps.
The 8481's battery life runs to nine hours, Acer claimed, and it said that said power pack has a greater longevity than most, not losing 20 per cent of its capacity after the usual 300 recharge cycles but after 1000.
Other specs include Sandy Bridge Core i processors, a choice of integrated-only and dual-GPU graphics - integrated plus Nvida, with the latter's Optimus tech handling the switch over.
The Acer TravelMate 8481 will be available the end of August for around £840. ®
COMMENTS
Dual drives ?
It doesn't use dual drives, the SSD is a mini PCI express card that is about the size of a WIFI card.
SSD's use very little power so no advantage to a flash enabled HDD.
toy screen
That be the sort of 'road warrior' who likes to think of himself as a something special and indispensible yet watching DVDs is the primary factor considered in choosing a laptop. How can they call it a laptop for professionals when it has a screen aspect ration that's designed for watching movies and an utterly naff vertical resolution? Give us this with 4:3 aspect and >1000 vertical pleeeease.
Now that's not a bad idea
Using SSD (which is fast but only allows limited overwrites) for / (which doesn't change much) and HDD for /home, /var, /tmp and swap (which does) really does look like the best of both worlds, and I'm going to have to try it myself.
Boffin-level question: Does writing to a subfolder also necessarily write to the directory of the containing folder? If the directory of / gets updated everytime something gets changed in /home or /tmp, then there is no wear-reduction benefit.
re.S not H
I agree with David Simpson 1. Also, every hibernate performed will wear down the SSD.
As for the laptop, this is better (faster) option than the hybrid drives.
hybrid drive
would this not be the same as a hybrid drive
like the segate baby, that can already be fitted to laptops and net books ?
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=momentus-xt-seagate-delivers-fastest-pr&vgnextoid=afb2308aaecb8210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD
