Solid State Drive (SSD)

In recent years, computer makers have started replacing the traditional spinning hard disk drive with a solid-state drive (SSD) on thier more portable laptops. This memory holds all of your pictures, programs, etc. and is similar in construction to the memory built into your USB flash drive, camera, or iPod. A SSD offers some tremendous advantages over the traditional hard disk drive. Here are the most important ones:

Advantages of a Solid-State Drive
  • Its more rugged, able to stand up to more shocks, vibrations, and bumps while traveling. When you see the advertisements of computers being dropped and bounced around and still working, chances are they have a SSD inside. They can get away with this type of abuse because there are no moving parts.
  • Low power consumption so your battery lasts longer
  • Faster and more robust, indirectly saving battery time since you spend less time waiting for your computer to respond
  • They are smaller and lighter, so correspondingly, so will your laptop.
Diadvantages of a Solid-State Drive (SSD)
  • Its substantially more expensive per unit of capacity than hard drives.
  • You don't get much storage memory (16GB vs 120GB) so if you store a lot of high resolution pictures (2,000 or more 2592x1944 photos) or do higher quality video editing (bigger than 640x40) you may want to opt for a laptop with a 120GB hard disk drive. You would also be limited if you wanted to install a bunch of large programs (e.g. the full Microsoft Office takes up 1/3 of a GB). I wouldn't purchase an 8DB SSD, go for at least 12DB.
  • You may not be able to purchace a laptop with Windows on an 8 GD SSD since it takes up so much memory (about 6 GB). You could opt for a Linx operating system.
Advantages of a Hard Disk Drive
  • You get LOTS more storage room (160GB), plenty enough to store programs, pictures, and videos for a year's trip.
Diadvantages of a Hard Disk Drive
  • It's made with lots of moving parts that get worn out and break. The vast number of computer crashes happen when the hard disk becomes defective.
  • Higher power consumption so you don't get as many hours out of the battery as you would if you chose a SSD.