Want A Small Thin Light Notebook? Here's How.

One product widely predicted for MacWorld Expo is the "ultra-thin" MacBook Pro, a replacement for the 12" aluminum Powerbook that never made the Intel transition with the rest of the family.

In keeping with Apple's "thin-is-in" bleeding-edge design strategy, the new notebook is rumored to drop the on-board SuperDrive for an external unit, and is said to use LED screen backlighting and a Solid State Drive (SSD) for better performance and power management.

But there's another drive option I haven't heard mentioned, and one which could make a lot more sense.

Dollars and cents, that is.

Price points...

You see, SSD's are still expensive little critters, loaded with tons of NAND flash memory.

A bare-bones 32GB version costs a couple of hundred bucks, and the recently introduced 128GB model costs a staggering $3,219.99 over on NewEgg.

Now, we all know that Apple tends to charge a premium price for its products, but three grand just for the drive is still a bit steep. Now, it's true that prices will fall, but we're also talking about a product that Apple is announcing now, not next year.

Apple could stick with the 32GB and 64GB versions which are priced a little more reasonably, but I don't like those options either.

Limitations...

The iPhone may be able to get away with 8GB, but that's because OS X on the iPhone is stripped down to only what's needed to run a phone, whereas a new Mac notebook has to act like a Mac notebook, with a full complement of software, drivers, and applications.

With that in mind, let's look at my Application, Library, and System folders on my MacBook Pro.

Together, those weigh in at about 23GB, which on a 32GB flash-based SSD would leave me about 7GB for those little things that make having a computer worthwhile. Frivolous, hardly worth mentioning items like documents, photos, music, and videos.

64GB is workable, but expensive, and still a bit paltry when the average TV show is half-a-gig and movies are a gig-and-a-half. And that's not even high-definition (wink).

So what's it to be? A standard-sized 2.5" notebook drive which increases the size of the unit, or a sexy but pricey flash drive with limited capacity?

Or is there, perhaps, an alternative behind door number 3?

Alternatives...

As a matter of fact, there is.

And it can be found in the super-small 1.8" hard drives Apple that uses in its disk-based iPods.

They're small, light, power-efficient, and if you compare them byte-for-byte to SSDs they're dirt cheap. Samsung's 160GB model, for example, runs at 4200RPM, has a 15ms seek time, and sub-1W power consumption.

And is inexpensive enough that Apple can use it in a $350 iPod.

Add 16GB or so of on-board flash to the notebook to cache system and application files so we can get eight hours or so off the battery, and boom... you've got it all: size, performance, and price.

Now, I'm not telling you that it's going to happen, you understand.

But when it does, you heard it here first.

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Related Articles:

• The Wireless MacBook
• The MacBook Air: An Ultra-Portable Concept
• The MacBook Air: The AT&T Connection
• Want A Small Thin Light Notebook? Here's How.

Comments

[Tim Fuller]

Good post. See the comment I posted after yours over at Gizmodo.
Enjoy.

[Ronan]

Is 4200RPM not a bit too slow for a cutting edge laptop?

[Michael Long]

Isn't a 32GB SSD a bit small for a "cutting-edge" notebook? Even the base-level MacBook has 80GB.

Besides, faster drives tend to have higher power requirements, and power is going to be an issue in a notebook where every possible millimeter has been shaved off (reducing battery space and as such, it's size).

And as I said in the article, you can use a small bit of flash for system files and applications, effectively negating most of the speed issues. It's not a video-editing station.

As I've said before, people would like to actually be able to USE their cool toys for more than a few hours at a time.

[LD]

32GB is plenty for a cutting edge, solid-state notebook. I highly disagree with, well, most of what you've posted.

A default install of OS X has a tremendous amount of bloat. When I got my iBook a few years back there was only a 30GB drive and that held the OS, all the iLife apps, Swahili and a bunch of other languages and printer drivers.

An ultraportable can make sacrifices for the sake of portability. That will come with minimizing non-essential language files, printer drivers, and audio samples. That alone will save 5-6GB of space.

A bit more optimization and you can get a svelte install of OS X with 99% of the typical user capabilities. Remember, this isn't meant to be your home iMac and I don't anticipate it being positioned as such.

I would suspect 64GB of flash, twice that of my old iBook that is currently running Leopard. Perhaps optional iLife, not pre-installed but bundled. Minimum 2GB of RAM.

Very doable.

And if Apple migrates things like roaming profiles from Server to regular OS X then you could combine it with and iPod or external USB flash drive. I don't see that happening, but it might.

I think you want an ultraportable to be an ultra-everything and that's not what it's for.

[Michael Long]

LD, I'm not entirely sure you can cut the size of OS X to the degree you indicate without compromising the usability of the system. An ultraportable notebook may be different to a degree, but by and large it still has to act like a notebook and do all of the things users expect notebooks to do.

BTW, the best retail price I could find for a 64GB SSD was over a grand, whereas a 160GB 1.8" drive can be had for roughly $150. Are you willing to pay an $850 premium for an SSD, over and above the cost of the notebook?

[LD]

What degree do I indicate? My iBook runs Leopard on a 30GB drive. I did a fresh install with no extra language files and no printer drivers. It's very efficient. And if Apple were to use a 64Gb they would have plenty of space left over.

My iBook experience is in no way compromised. It does 100% of what a notebook needs to do. It came that way from Apple with Panther on it and ran awesome with the iLife apps that were pre-installed. I paired it down when Tiger came out and a fresh install to keep it slim with Leopard.

I think you forget that OS X hasn't grown much in size since it's initial release, when 9GB SCSI drives were quite common in the towers.

I'm not willing to pay for a slow, moving hard drive in an ultraportable. Apple won't compromise by making simply another, normal notebook like other PC makers. If they make an ultraportable it will be unique, it will be 100% solid state.

FYI, Dell sells a current notebook with a 32GB SSD starting at $1629. The 64GB is $399 more. I'd be willing to pay $1600 for a solid state ultraportable Mac. And that price point hits right where the rumors are talking, around $1500.

I think you are way off with your prediction.

[Michael Long]

Ah, Dell is selling a 32GB at $1600, with 64GB at $2000. So with your earlier estimate of a 64GB drive and 2GB RAM, you're talking two grand, not fifteen hundred. Still a bit pricey.

Besides, there are other ways to get a "cutting edge" notebook.

See: http://www.iSights.org/2008/01/the-wireless-ma.html

[Michael Long]

So LD, what do you think the chances of a MacBook Air using notebook sized drives is now?

[David Dennis]

I thought I would congratulate you on getting it right!

The SSD option seems pretty dumb since I just don't see it being worth $1,000 to actually decrease the amount of available storage!

It is a bit disappointing they needed to allow only the 80gb drive. I would have taken the greater thickness for 160gb but then it wouldn't have looked revolutionary (thinner than anything else out there).

D