Buy an SSD Drive to Boost Performance for Under $200

From Consumer Reports, December 2014:

Upgrade My Old Computer or Buy New? Q. I am trying to decide between replacing the hard drive on my 2007 iMac for $250 or buying a new iMac for about $1,350. The old iMac is meeting my needs, and I’ve barely used the storage available on it. But I’m trying to avoid be- coming obsolete. Any advice?
—Roseanne Morrell, New Haven, CT

A. We’re big proponents of upgrading before buying new. (One of our experts once upgraded several 10-year-old Windows XP PCs to Win- dows 7, with double the memory.) Apple is good about maintaining compatibility between its computers and its latest Mac OS version. So replace the hard drive. And while you’re at it, install enough memory to bring it up to 4GB: That will boost performance with newer, larger Mac OS versions and applications.

The Geek's take:
Upgrading your older hard drive to an SSD drive is now very affordable, with 250GB drives available for under $150 and 500GB options available for $250 or less.

B&H has a Toshiba 512GB Q Series Internal Solid State on sale for $200 right now.  Just 18 months ago ago, these would cost $300-500.

The Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III model is the #1 selling internal SSD drive on Amazon.com, and has been in the top 10 list for many months.  At only $120, this drive is an easy way to swap out an old laptop hard drive.  Average users love it too.  It has a 4.7 out of 5 star rating with over 5,000 customer reviews. The larger 500GB model from Samsung is just $230.

$120 for a 250GB drive = $0.48 per GB.
$110 for a 256GB drive = $0.43 per GB -- Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5"
$230 for a 500GB drive = $0.46 per GB.
$205 for a 512GB drive = $0.40 per GB. - Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter)

Sale Prices (around Black Friday)

$110
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD (MZ-7TE250BW)
Sequential Read Speed 540 MB / Sequential Write Speed 520 MB

$190
Samsung 840 EVO 500GB SSD (MZ-7TE500BW)
Sequential Read Speed 540 MB / Sequential Write Speed 520 MB

$190
Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) SSD CT512MX100SSD1


Why Upgrade to an SSD?
They are best performance upgrade for the money.  For $200 or less you can upgrade your operating system drive to run on one of the fastest drives available today.  Your computer will boot almost instantly and applications will also load much faster.

SSD drives have no moving parts, use less energy, and do not generate as much heat, which is one of the things that wears out laptops over time.  If you drop a laptop that contains an older spinning hard drive, there's a good change that you'll trash your drive and loose data. (Unless your drive has a motion sensor to detect falling movements.)

Upgrade an old laptop to SSD power for less than $100
If storage space is not a concern and you simply want to upgrade an old laptop to get the performance benefits of an SSD, check out these models:

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5-Inch SATA III 
Sequential Read Speed 540 MB / Sequential Write Speed 410 MB
$83
SanDisk Ultra Plus 128GB SATA 6.0GB/s 2.5-Inch 7mm Height
sequential read: up to 530 MB/s
sequential write:up to 290 MB/s
$64
the SanDisk Ultra Plus offers a Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of 2 million hours based on a parts stress analysis (4). MTBF is the predicted amount of time the drive will operate without failure and is a measure of reliability.
2 million hours is 228 years.

Kingston Digital 120GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3 2.5 
450MB/s read and write
$57
(bad reviews on some versions of the firmware)

Crucial MX100 128GB SATA 2.5" 7mm
Sequential Write: 150MB/s - Sequential Read: 550MB/s
(lowest write speed of these models)
$70


Learn more:

Top 20 Best Selling SSD drive on Amazon.com

Amazon.com: Intel 520 Series Solid-State Drive 240 GB SATA 6 Gb/s 2.5-Inch - SSDSC2CW240A310 (Drive Only): Computers & Accessories


What buyers are saying about SSD upgrades:

Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) 
Received my MX100 512GB today and swapped it into my 2009 MBP [MacBook Pro] and put the existing 256 GB 5400 RPM hard drive into an external case. Cloned over the hard drive, enabled full disk encryption, and moved on without any issues so far. Granted it has only been a few hours, but I can see the difference immediately. My 5 year old machine has new life. Bootup went from 3 minutes to 7 seconds. I tend to keep multiple tabs open on my web browser and it definitely is moving faster. I could tell on my old hard drive that I was spending lots of time paging to the disk (even with 8GB of RAM).
read the complete review on Amazon.com

Macworld September 2009

Cabledrop (add image)
Each adhesive CableDrop is a cute, round clasp that keeps a single unplugged cable from falling behind your desk. That means no more crawling underneath your desk to find the right plug. You can also attach CableDrops to your display, to hold, say, earbuds you're not using. A six-pack is $10.

Hulu Desktop
Has a front-row style interface. Requires a Mac with a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better, 2GB of RAM, and OS 10.4 or later.
www.hulu.com

Cram iPhone App
"Study for tests with flashcards and multiple choice tests on your Mac & iPhone. Featured as an Apple Staff Pick.

I Love Stars 3.0
Free, 4.5 Stars
The program puts iTunes' five-star rating scale in the menu bar. The rating scale automatically hides when iTunes ins't playing. It sounds an audible alert and flashes the rating scale as a reminder, after a song has played about tw-thirds of the way through. Keyboard shortcuts can be assigned to rate tracks. The author [Dan Frakes] uses Cmd-Option-5 to assign a five-star rating, for example.

iPhone 3.0 Software Update
Major Features

• Cutting and Pasting
• Buy/rent movies, music, and TV shows on the iTunes store
• Voice Recorder
  
• Mutiple iTunes accounts available
• MobleMe subscribers can use the Find My iPhone service to locate a lost phone

iPhones have a visual voicemail feature that's apparently unmatched by other smartphones.

"Apple considers the memory and hard drive to be user-serviceable parts."

The 15" MacBook Pro models now have a nonremovable battery (lithium-polymer) that lasts for 1,000 charges, or approximately five years, instead of the 300 recharges that most notebook batteries get.

SD Card Emergency Disk
The new 13- and 15- inch MacBook Pros have SD card slots that can be used if you've made an SD card into an emergency boot drive. In Disk Utility, set the default partition table to GUID and format the card in the Mac OS Extended file format. Then run the Mac OS install disc that came with your MacBook Pro and set the SD card as the destination. To fit Leopard on an 8GB SD card, you'll need to do a custom installation and deselect the options for Printer Drivers, Additional Fonts, Language Translation, and Xn. About 30MB of free space should still be left on the SD card.

Password Assistant Tool in OS X
A Password generator is actually built into OS X . It's available as a small, black, key icon when changing passwords under the Accounts pane of System Preferences.

Top Password Tips

Excerpts:
"A brute force attack can easily defeat as password with seven or fewer characters. . .You'll get the best protection from a random password of at least 11 characters."

"One way to create to create a random password is to think of an easily remembered sentence, then use the first letter of each word, substituting numbers as appropriate. The string ZTwt12potYS, for example, follows no apparent pattern. But it's still memorable because it's derived from the sentence "Zachary Taylor was the twelfth president of the United States."

"Words, names, and dates someone might associate with you make poor passwords. But you can produce strong passwords by combining them."

Take Control of iTunes

Skip to next/previous track
Right/left arrow keys

Seek 5 seconds forward or backward in the current track
Cmd-Option-Arrow (left/right)

Make the search bar active
Cmd-Option-F

GimmeSomeTune 4.2
(payment requested)
The writer uses this iTunes Controller app.
Keyboard shortcuts to play, pause, and control the volume, and rate tracks. It can automatically download artwork and lyrics for the music.

Mac OS Hints

View Huge Preview Icons
- Run a spotlight search
- Enable the Icon view mode (Cmd-1) or View > As Icons
- In the bottom right corner of the results window is a slider that can make the previews large.
- Use the Cmd-1 shortcut to a

Control Hot Corners with Modifier Keys.
As you're selecting an action for hot corner, hold the modifier key (or keys) you wnat to use.

Interesting Ad
"Your iPhone ideas to Cash Flow in 3 Steps)
Zco develops, deploys, and supports your app.

Final Article
"Give Peace a Chance" by Harry McCracken

Consumer Reports: Best Digital Cameras

Consumer Reports, July 2009

Subcompact

#3 Nikon Coolpix S610 $220 Recommended
- very good image quality
- optical stabilizer
- wide angle

#8 Canon Powershot SD1100 IS Elph $150 Recommended
- very short next shot delay (excellent)
- very good image quality
>> Also available: the 10MP Canon Powershot SD1200 IS Elph, $230, with
face detection self timer.

Compact

#2 Canon Powershot A1000 IS $140 Recommended
- very good image quality
- one of the highest battery life ratings (450 shots)

#3 Canon PowerShot A590 IS $110 Best Buy
- Good image quality
- 450 shot battery rating
- excellent next-shot delay


Consumer Reports rated the Nikon D300 and D90 to have "max ISO with best quality" at 3200.