Samsung 830 SSDs at clearance prices...

[kstuart]

... because the new 840 Pro line is released on October 23rd.

While the 840 Pro is getting very good reviews, and seems like it would be an upgrade for a very recent laptop, it seems to me that the 830 is a much better value this week for T60 and T61 owners - because neither will go any faster than SATA 2 (and then only with modded BIOS - see other threads).

At the moment, you can get the 128gb 830 for less than the pre-sale price of the 64gb 840 Pro, and while one might not need the extra space (I don't), evidently the 128gb 830 has significantly faster write speed than the 64gb 830 - for reasons only memory engineers are likely to understand (although perhaps a larger cache is involved). It seems the same might end up being the case for the 840 Pro line, so the cheaper 128gb 830 may even be faster than the 64gb 840 Pro, in some respects.

Since I just obtained a T61, the timing was good for me, and I've ordered a 128gb 830...

[wolfman]

Ah that explains it, I was wondering why I was seeing the 830 128gb at newegg for $79.99. Seemed to come down in price very quickly, but the 840 pro seems to explain it... clearing out stock.

[Oro]

Is this the product you are referring to?:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820147163

I'm looking for a ~120-ish for a T61p. Also, I see it as both out of stock and 89.99, not 79.99 like mentioned.

Is there a reason to not get the slightly less expensive OCZ SSD's? For example, this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820227812

I do not know much about SSDs, evaluating them, etc.

[kstuart]

The 79.99 price was on 10/10 using a promo code, and they sold out partway through the day (unfortunately right before I started looking for SSD's). I found one for $89.99 on another large US electronics site (and since the 840 Pro will be $149.99 in that size, it's still a very good value).

The following is strictly from other people's comments, so it is "hearsay"...

The current geek/nerd/techie consensus opinion is that the Samsung SSD's are the most reliable, as well as having high performance in certain areas. Samsung is the only SSD maker who manufactures and designs every part of the SSD.

OCZ SSD's are supposed to have very good performance in some respects, but less reliability.

[RealBlackStuff]

Avoid OCZ, they have a rather bad reputation.
For one, several models are slightly over"sized", so they fit very tight or not at all, and more important, they are quite unreliable.
That's why they are forever 'on special sale' and they have such an enormous amount of models, that nobody knows which ones perform how.
Yikes, is all I can say about them.
Look into a Samsung 830 SSD at the moment...

[ajkula66]

Avoid OCZ, they have a rather bad reputation.
For one, several models are slightly over"sized", so they fit very tight or not at all, and more important, they are quite unreliable.
That's why they are forever 'on special sale' and they have such an enormous amount of models, that nobody knows which ones perform how.
Yikes, is all I can say about them.
Look into a Samsung 830 SSD at the moment...

Pick your poison...

OCZ (as well as Mushkin, to my great disappointment) with SandForce (or should we say sandbox) controller should be avoided at all costs IMO.

The older (SATA II) OCZs with Indilinx controller are actually quite good BUT have that lousy oversize that RBS was referring to...

Samsung - as well as Crucial - sound good IMO, and I'm getting very itchy to finally try out the 830 series myself...

[kstuart]

If anyone is looking for a site with stock of the 830 128gb, I found mine at tigerdirect.com (which has the advantage for me of not charging sales tax in Calif. - unlike newegg and Amazon).

[Radioguy]

Samsung has one of, if not the, best reputations in the SSD market. If you have a T61, you can't make use of SATA III, so I'd certainly take advantage of these clearance SATA II prices.

As for retailers, Tiger Direct has a reputation akin to what OCZ has the SSD market. I'd check out Fry's if I were in CA instead for the Samsung. Otherwise, I'd stick with Newegg, etc.

[tipo33]

About 2 months ago I purchased a 64g Samsung 830 at Microcenter in Chicago for 59.99 They didn't have it on display, I specificaly had to ask for it.

[Oro]

lots of good advice here made me go do some focused homework.

The Samsung 830 really sounds like an impressive piece of engineering. Waiting to catch a 128gb on another sale at Newegg sounds like the plan. For not that many dollars more than the OCZ, it really seems the way to go. Thanks for the sound advice.

follow up: I saw some for sale at another computer store that had them in stock at a good price, stated as "DELL OEM" bulk purchase. Is there a reason to suspect a Dell oem'd one would have any "hard" differences in the controller or elsewhere that would keep it from playing friendly if formatted for another system?

[GACrabill]

Is there a reason to suspect a Dell oem'd one would have any "hard" differences in the controller or elsewhere that would keep it from playing friendly if formatted for another system?

With a little more research you may find discussions of warranty differences between OEM and Retail versions of the same SSD. Another issue has been lack of firmware updates for OEM versions ... though I do not know if this is true of the Samsung 830 Series.

[kstuart]

Since the 830 will be discontinued in 10 days, there is no guarantee that any particular store will get more stock. Maybe, maybe not...

[Oro]

I just got an email they are back in stock there (Newegg), at the $90 price. But I see your point and will keep that in mind.

[TuuS]

You'll probably find the OEM ones have much different warranty then a non-dell branded drive. With the dell you'd have to warranty it through dell most likely and when you tell them you don't own a dell computer and didn't buy the drive from them, they may laugh at you, so do your homework.

If you do get one, I'd contact samsung as soon as it arrives and confirm the warranty even if they claim it's covered pre-sale. They may change their mind when they lookup the serial numbers.

Good luck

[kstuart]

Currently saying "out of stock" again at Newegg... the stock might have just been a few people canceling their orders after hearing about the 840 Pro...

[miro_gt]

go shop today, I just bought 2 of the 256GB drives for 160 each at amazon, lol, cant beat that.

[BitEngineer]

Newegg has the Samsung 830 256GB (without installation kit) currently for $169 shipped. On October 15th, they had a promo code that took $10 off that price, making it $159. Snagged one for my T61.

For patient buyers, I bet they run another promo eventually, if they don't sell out. So add a Newegg price alert to your account and they will e-mail you when the price drops or there is a rebate.

[kstuart]

The 128gb one went up $20 in price at both Newegg and TigerDirect over the weekend (to $109).

I often see items at both Newegg and Amazon that are years old technology, priced at higher than the new stuff.

Why ? Because people often would rather just buy the exact same model again, rather than start over investigating the new stuff. So I expect these online stores to keep stock of the 830 line long after the 840 Pro goes on sale in a week.

And there will probably be people who "prefer the old version"...

[BitEngineer]

256GB now $154.99 shipped at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-2-5-Inch- ... 5%22+256GB

[Oro]

Thanks for that heads up. I checked and saw the 128gb was $70 delivered from them (Amazon, with Prime). So that settles it for me. That's $10 less than the notify price I set at Newegg; Amazon ftw!

[RealBlackStuff]

And for a limited time the SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC064B/WW 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Solid State Drive is available at Newegg for $49.99 shipped!
Use Promo code: EMCJNJB74
Only Thursday thru Saturday, October 18/19/20, 2012
I already snagged two!

[Radioguy]

Hrmm, it's probably not impossible to find a 128gb for less than twice that; if not now, then in the next couple of weeks. Also, 32 or 64 GB seem less and less practical these days despite accommodating an OS install. Things like Photoshop and other sizable-footprint apps will fill it up in no time.

Of course, Samsung is what to aim for and everyone knows it. I expect the clearance prices won't come down quite as fast or widely as with a SanDisk, but I'd still wait out settling for lower capacities than 120-128GB. That's a more reasonable base size for OS + Software use.

[RealBlackStuff]

For someone on-the-go, 64GB should be perfectly OK.
Web browsing, email, Office and e.g. Irfanview should cover most of the average needs.
My travel laptop (X60s) has only a 32GB SSD with W7-Pro, Word, Excel, Firefox, Thunderbird and Irfanview and is less than half full.
It has plenty of space to also temporarily hold any travel/holiday pictures I may take.
At home I never use a laptop, although I have about 30 of them lying around.
That's where I use my desktop with all the mod cons and 2 TB of storage.

[Radioguy]

For someone on-the-go, 64GB should be perfectly OK.
Web browsing, email, Office and e.g. Irfanview should cover most of the average needs.
My travel laptop (X60s) has only a 32GB SSD with W7-Pro, Word, Excel, Firefox, Thunderbird and Irfanview and is less than half full.
It has plenty of space to also temporarily hold any travel/holiday pictures I may take.
At home I never use a laptop, although I have about 30 of them lying around.
That's where I use my desktop with all the mod cons and 2 TB of storage.

That kind of says it all. For average needs, and with a Desktop as the primary PC, I might agree.

The thing is, my needs aside, I've never considered average needs to require a ThinkPad, which is more suited to, and marketed for, business use. While one would want the best, it can be overkill for the setup above as compared to other brands overall, especially with the premium price ThinkPads have traditionally demanded. Considering the demographic that use them, I think a more sizable amount of people using TPs would install larger productivity apps compared to the VAIO user. This is even more true with ever-increasing reliance on the laptop as a primary PC. If it were not the case, the W series would not have been conceived.

Of course, Photoshop, like Irfanview, is a personal taste, but Adobe applications like PS, Dreamweaver and the like, and familiarity with them, are required in some professional circumstances. We all know how much space they take, as we do with AutoCAD, VMware, and those lesser suites like MS Office, and so I think it's a reasonable caution to reconsider 64GB (glad we're leaving out 32GB!) as practical.

Everyone has differing needs, but ThinkPads, on the whole, are for business use, and so they could very realistically fill up with professionally needed software in a flash. In that light, I don't think I'm overcautious when opining how 64GB might not be the best choice.

[kstuart]

I think that someone's use of specialized professional applications needs to be heavy in order to need more space than 64gb. The 128gb arrived from TigerDirect on Monday, installed fine on the T61, and my total space usage is 15gb.

In terms of storage space, I need a big multi-TB external hard drive for music and video storage - none of the SSD sizes work for storage, and are too expensive per GB for that anyway.

The main problem with the 64gb SSD is that Samsung has made it significantly slower in write speed (and in fact, the 256gb is slightly faster than the 128gb as well). I suspect this is a marketing ploy, as 90% of users would otherwise find the 64gb just fine for their laptop (note that 60gb hard drive was a normal laptop size very recently).

[twistero]

The main problem with the 64gb SSD is that Samsung has made it significantly slower in write speed (and in fact, the 256gb is slightly faster than the 128gb as well). I suspect this is a marketing ploy, as 90% of users would otherwise find the 64gb just fine for their laptop (note that 60gb hard drive was a normal laptop size very recently).

Larger SSDs are generally faster than smaller ones in the same series, because the controller chip reads/writes several flash memory chips in parallel. A 128GB drive, which uses twice as many flash memory chips as a 64GB one, has a theoretical max speed twice that of a 64GB drive.

[kstuart]

Then why is the 256gb only marginally faster than the 128gb, and the 512gb is no faster than the 256gb ?

[kstuart]

And for a limited time the SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC064B/WW 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Solid State Drive is available at Newegg for $49.99 shipped!
Use Promo code: EMCJNJB74
Only Thursday thru Saturday, October 18/19/20, 2012
I already snagged two!

Thanks for the heads up.
Since I had already opted for the 128gb for my T61 (before it went up over the weekend), I did order two 64gb for Xmas presents (I doubt one will see a top end SSD for $49 again for many months - although long-term history always has capacities increasing steadily).

[Radioguy]

Larger SSDs are generally faster than smaller ones in the same series, because the controller chip reads/writes several flash memory chips in parallel. A 128GB drive, which uses twice as many flash memory chips as a 64GB one, has a theoretical max speed twice that of a 64GB drive.

I've read that elsewhere as well. It contributed to my stance on -100GB SSDs, but I still think they will fill quickly up in either circumstance.

I think that someone's use of specialized professional applications needs to be heavy in order to need more space than 64gb. The 128gb arrived from TigerDirect on Monday, installed fine on the T61, and my total space usage is 15gb.

Not as much as you think. By the way, does that 15GB include any such apps or app suites?

I know another argument can be that such software need not be installed to the primary OS installed drive. Yet, access times can impact application performance even if the 2nd drive is an SSD (due to adapter/interface limitations).

In terms of storage space, I need a big multi-TB external hard drive for music and video storage - none of the SSD sizes work for storage, and are too expensive per GB for that anyway.

Agreed, but active work projects, prior to being archived on another drive, can still have a significant disk cost. Media such as films, music, and TV, should always be stored on another drive. I wouldn't even factor in such media towards what I'd consider a practical capacity SSD.