Yesterday I was delivered my first SSD which I’ve brought over the internet and installed it into my 2-year-old laptop. And result is really what they are saying about SSDs on the internet – improved performance in every aspect, except maybe internet connection speed.

My laptop is running Ubuntu operational system and I use it for entertainment (watching TV movies/shows and browsing the internet) and programming (web development). For entertainment HDD is just fine but for web development it’s been bothering me for quite some time how slow the system was. While doing web development you’re running couple of resource-hungry processes – at minimum internet browser, code editor (I use Atom and WebStorm) and development server, possible more than one, that watches for file change, compiles source code and reloads the browser.

Before deciding to buy SSD I was also fiddling with the idea to buy additional RAM since my laptop supports it (up to 8 GB). After researching the internet I decided to buy SSD first and watch RAM consumption since there was information that reading/loading from SSD also takes less RAM. That proved to be true but change were not as significant as I thought at first. So I’ll definitely buy additional RAM.

At the end all this upgrade will cost me around 160 € (laptop was 530 €) which is nothing compared to a price of a new laptop. Laptops that suit my needs (more or equal than 8 GB of RAM, SSD, good processor and graphics card) start at 800 €.