<p>I will be getting a Macbook Pro at some point before college, and I just wanted an opinion on something.</p>
<p>I plan on the 15", with everything maxed out. As far as storage goes, though, its either the 500gb 7200rpm hdd or the 128gb ssd. </p>
<p>If I get the 500gb, then I would supplement it with a small external. On the other hand, if I get the 128gb, I'd probably have something around 2TB external.</p>
<p>Besides general school work (Comp. Eng.), I'll be doing some gaming (Source-engine, SCII, Minecraft, etc.), as well as video editing.</p>
<p>What do you guys think? I don't have any experience with solid-state drives, so I figured a survey would help my own research a bit.</p>
<p>If your going to max everything out anyway, i’d just get the SSD. It has much faster boot times and better performance than your basic HDD. In terms of productivity, its a nice choice and i’m sure would last you a good while, though i’ve read on several articles that the failure rate with SSD is about the same as HDD which kind of stinks considering how much they cost. Solid state memory is where everything is headed though, so I wouldn’t worry about spending extra cash on a more future proof technology.</p>
<p>How recent are the failure rate reports you’ve read? They have only started becoming much more common not too long ago. Since Hard drive access times are one of the major bottlenecks of general computing today (definitely for the typical user) it’ll work. Then you can just take advantage of an external drive for storage.</p>
<p>pretty recent. I read about it on lowendmac.com about installing ssd in older mac machines and what the downside of this was. They said the failure rates were right there with HDD which amazed me since all I had ever heard was their durability was a big selling point for them.</p>
<p>Save your money. You’re already paying college tuition. Most likely your hard drive isn’t going to fail, and unless you’re completely sure you need the high R/W speeds you should save your money.</p>
<p>But. If you have money then by all means, get it!</p>
<p>Since it seems like you plan on having an external hard drive either way, go ahead and try out the SSD if you have the money. The failure rates on some of the low quality SSD drives concern me a fair bit (just go on newegg and read the reviews for any SSD made by OCZ, especially the vertex 2). But odds are Apple is not using a low quality drive and you should be fine.</p>
<p>Get the SSD after you buy your Mac. I’ve had my MBP for two years and am planning to get an SSD this summer before I go to college. You can get a better SSD for less/same price.</p>
<p>I definitely agree that doing the upgrade yourself will save you some serious money, Apple puts a pretty hefty markup on everything they sell, but they do use good quality components in my experience anyway. Then just buy a case for your HDD that was removed and you will have an external HDD to store data on. best of both worlds.</p>