Last Updated on November 21, 2018 by Dave Farquhar
My employer is experimenting with a few desktop PCs with SSDs. And they are amazing. These machines have an Intel Core i5 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 120 GB SSD. They log on and off in seconds. Word and Excel 2010, which are absolute slugs on HDDs, load in one second. The time is right for SSDs in business.
This is what modern computing is supposed to be.
There’s plenty of benefit, too. Quality SSDs fail predictably, so that reduces maintenance. They take images very fast, which reduces maintenance. Their small size encourages people to save their data on the network, where it’s backed up. The same thing discourages users from storing movies and music on their PCs, which is a legal liability in more than one regard. Depending on the user’s choice of movies, it could be both an HR issue and a copyright issue.
But beyond the intangible benefits, there’s the increased productivity. The computer is almost always ready for the user.
It wouldn’t take long for a $100 SSD to pay for itself by saving a couple of hours of most workers’ time each month.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
I’ve taken a couple of older Toshiba Tecra A10 laptop at work and put in 8GB memory and a SSD. They are surprisingly fast and people can’t believe how fast they go from pushing the on button to logging into the desktop. They are faster than a couple of one year old laptops we have with regular hard drives. I’ve replaced my home PC’s with SSD’s too. I’d be hard pressed to go back!