Laptop Mag: Eee PC 1000H runs faster with SSD

The folks at Laptop Magazine decided to take their Eee PC 1000H, rip out the hard drive, and install a solid state disk to see what impact the change has on performance. But wait, isn’t the Eee PC 1000H basically identical to the Eee PC 1000, but with an 80GB hard drive instead of a 40GB SSD? Why not just compare the two machines?

Well, there are two answers to that question. First, they don’t have an Eee PC 1000 on hand at the moment. And second, they threw a blazing fast Samsung SATA II 64GB SSD in the Eee PC 1000H. The Samsung disk is significantly faster (And more expensive) than the SSD modules Asus includes in its computers. For comparison’s sake, Laptop compared read/write times, boot times, and application launch times on a stock Eee PC 1000H, an upgraded Eee PC 1000H, and an Eee PC 901 which basically has the same components as the 1000 series, including a SSD. But the 901 has a smaller screen.

Not surprisingly, the upgraded Eee PC 1000H blew the others out of the water… most of the time. In some tests (like Windows XP boot speed), it performed pretty much the same as the Eee PC 901. And in most, but not all application launch tests, it finished ahead of the competition. What’s interesting is just how much slower the Eee PC 1000H with its hard drive is in some tests than either the upgraded model or the 901. It takes 7 seconds longer to boot MS Word 2007, 4 seconds longer to start Adobe Reader, and 3 seconds longer to start Firefox 3.

It’s also noteworthy that the Eee PC 1000H with the SSD got about 20 minutes of additional battery life, but still crapped out about 40 minutes earlier than the Eee PC 901, which got about 5.5 hours on a single charge.

For anyone keeping track, Laptop Magazine performed a similar experimentwith the MSI Wind notebook a few weeks ago. But the SSD used in that test wasn’t as fancy as the Samsung SATA II and the tests weren’t as exhaustive. The conclusion at the time? SSD isn’t always better than HDD. The conclusion now? You get what you pay for.