[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Boot envy - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Thu, Jun 21 2012 0:23 bradley

Boot envy

Building a tiny desktop - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA":
http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2012/06/18/building-a-tiny-desktop.aspx

Machine built.  Have to tidy up the cables and what not and put the case on but it's basically built.

I have boot envy now.  We're thinking about putting in SSD drives at the office on some of the workstations even.

It really really really boots fast and is very very very responsive.

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# re: Boot envy

Thursday, June 21, 2012 6:25 AM by Ben Krause

I love SSD drives.  I started using them for customer builds and got jealous and built myself a box with an SSD.  Now I can't stand to use other people's computers.

# re: Boot envy

Thursday, June 21, 2012 8:42 AM by SeanPT

Make the SSD leap. For stability sake, go Intel on your drives. (The slight premium is worth the peace of mind).

I'm not a huge fan of Windows 8 but it sure does boot fast -- even on a domain. My old Windows 7 install was pretty quick on the same hardware but once it was added to a domain, holy crackers. Laptops w/ wi-fi were just bad when it came to slow boot.

Whatever they changed in Windows 8 has helped a lot in both instances. If only it would stop telling me to tap everywhere!

# re: Boot envy

Thursday, June 21, 2012 9:07 AM by bradley

There's a recent update about slow domain boot, have you installed that on Win7?

# re: Boot envy

Thursday, June 21, 2012 1:20 PM by Indy

We migrated our entire fleet of desktops (40+ machines) to SSD years ago, never looked back.

No issues to date with a single one.  We used Intel, Samsung, OCZ, Crucial, Kingston.  However we're standardizing on Intel and Samsung moving forward.

I have had issues with OCZ on my home/personal machine, and I won't ever use that company again.  Horrible RMA process, known issues with some of their drives, horrible response rate to the problems encountered.

As for building machines, I just don't have the time to build these days, and the difference between an OEM+add some custom parts (mainly graphics and SSD) and custom and taking hours configuring is not worthwhile to us.

We're no longer going to put optical on machines.  There will be roaming Optical drives when people need them.

# @SeanPT

Thursday, June 21, 2012 4:54 PM by Joe Raby

I've found Crucial m4 drives to be extremely fast, and still stable, but far cheaper than Intel's.

Even the low-end 64GB drive gets 550MB/sec reads (when connected to 6Gbps drive controllers).  It sells for ~$80US.  It's a standard consumer drive though, not enterprise-ready.  Still, it's fine for any standard PC or workstation.  For systems that need larger storage, I'll often pair up one of Crucial's Cache SSD's to a WD Black or Seagate Barracuda XT for the best performance in a lower price point.