What made you conclude that an SSD is better than a hybrid? Not that I disbelieve you, it's just that I've been looking at an iMac with the "fusion" drive (read Apple claptrap marketing spiel for 'hybrid') and felt a gut dislike of the name if nothing else.

Can't remember. Looking at what's on the market (here in Canada) now:

- hybrid drives are a lot cheaper than they were, but still >2x more than a 'plain' hdd of equivalent storage capacity.

- the actual ssd part has underwhelming capacity (e.g. 8 GB), which is used as a cache and not a standalone volume on which you can install stuff (I think. Is it even persistent?)

- so stuff like booting and program launching might not benefit all that much anyway

- "Improves overall responsiveness by 20% or more" Meh.

The actual reason why *I* didn't buy an ssd is because I only had one available sata slot (the other being occupied by a dvd drive), and I would have wanted a regular hdd on board as well for all the stuff I keep onboard, AND I run a 4-way multiboot (xp + 3 linuxes) so it seemed like too much of a hassle to work out how to put an ssd into the mix.

Have to say though that the latest iMacs are super fast. Which they ought to be considering the price. Not sure if any of the 4 we got in at work over the past year or so (most recent a couple of months) have hybrid drives in 'em.

Aah really? That is rather awesome to know. I've only ever used the Dvd drive for installing Windows, but can't that be done via a SD card these days?

I thought the hybrid drive was default, but it seems that that is only the case of the retina iMac.

Yes

:(

Why do you not want to think? What have they done to you to make you like this?

I have thought for literally many minutes and it is not helping.

I think he's having you on with a annoying clever play on words.

You said:
  He said:

He's probably gone all Times cryptic crossword on you with u-turn meaning a backwards or an upside down character, and 'got one' could imply choosing the number 1 rather than procurement of a thing.

So, what's Y upside down? Something like a reversed lambda symbol. But why two of them? Two lambda characters next to each other look something like... Two upside down Ys. Maybe they somehow form the logo of the company PB thought you bought the drive from.


 

fookin' hell, you've actually given that some thought! :/

Not really, just the ramblings of a bored worker.

I did wonder about the u-turn and upside-down/reversed characters but... yeah. I don't see where that goes with 2Y either.

[Peter observes his lab rats running through the maze]

I assumed it was "why?" twice. One asking why you were opposed to SSDs and the second then why you got one.

[Ooooh a clever rat!]

Yep. I reckon Chris might be onto something.

omg you may be onto something.

I will answer both questions in case you are right.

I was opposed to SSDs because due to their size/price it's not like you can put *everything* on there. So, in the case of Windows you have to choose, really, between the OS or the apps and games on the SSD. So you either get a fast boot (who cares really) or apps that load fast the first time per boot (who cares) and/or games which load faster (kinda cool but... who really cares).

With Linux it's a *bit* better since the apps and the OS kinda go together. But the benefit is mitigated by the fact that I reboot about once a month and stuff loads fast when it's cached anyway.

So, given their prices compared to HDDs I never really thought they were worth it.

*However*. I recently built a new PC and it's a pretty (by my standards) decent PC with fast things in it. And it seemed a bit odd to not have an SSD in such a spec. So I got one to see what all the fuss is about.

It's kinda cool. Boots fast and apps start essentially instantly in most cases. Still not sure they're worth it though (~6x the price for the same capacity).

I really should put my SSD in my laptop. It has a higher capacity than the drive in here now and I rarely use my desktop these days.

I'm going to wait for Windows 10 before I get one. Can't face doing two fresh installs in the near future.

Seems like drunk kos has been hitting eBay. A 256gb mx100 and an adapter thing for the did drive turned up today.

Windows installed in 10 minutes 36 seconds (from a Kingston usb3 stick). Removing old hard drive (stuck screw) and working out how to boot from USB took almost an hour.

Just done a reboot and from clicking restart and having a usable desktop (including choosing os and entering password) was 36 seconds. Not too shabby!

(hug) (woot)

I do some of my best most expensive purchasing while under the influence of alcohol!