Hardware :: Ssd Drive Vs Conventional One - Netbook To Boot Faster

see [URL] I am still somewhat happy with my netbook, although I have a Lenovo X61 from work (with XP) that I just love and since the netbook was purchase for travel, I don't use it as much as I use the x61. But I am preparing for a trip soon and have been trying to get the netbook to boot faster. Default Ubuntu 9.04 was taking about 1m 40s from off to a usable web site. Many tweaks later using the default hardware still, I get boots on average of 1m 10s or so.

I have tried fluxbox and xfce4, but shave maybe 10s off on a good boot, but am then in a much more limited DE, so I don't see the 10s being a good reason to limit myself. Using bootchart, it reports a boot time of ~30 so I really do believe it is gnome/X that is taking the longest time. Anyway...I finally broke down and got an ssd drive from Newegg [URL].

I dd'd the old hdd to the new ssd and guess what? Absolutely no change what so ever to the boot times. The ssd drive (although silent) has not gained me any speed at boot up. My average boot times are still 1m+. Also, I ran a battery test last night (wrote time out to a file every minute and ran totem none stop until the battery died) and I got 2 hours of life out of the 3 cell battery. This is about the same battery life I was getting with the traditional hdd.

In conclusion: As it stands now, the ssd drive has gained me nothing but silence, but at the cost of 100gigs (hdd = 160gig vs ssd = 60g)... no improvement to battery life no improvement to boot times The system does *seem* a little more responsive when the OS is finally up, but again, at what cost?