Non-Rant
What's the point of laptops with just 8GB of SSDs. Does it speed up stuff?

I' e seen some that use it for storing the OS so it runs faster in general, but those generally have a larger traditional hard drive in them to do most of the file storage for documents, etc.

@Kaji Windows 10 needs 16-20GB, and probably even that will cause problems with larger updates.

But I guess @Faraaz means hybrid drives with 8GB SSD memory. In that case it's supposed to accelerate stuff a bit, but SSDs are obviously better.

I think some of these have the ability to copy often used files to the SSD part in order to speed up the experience for the user.
Still, why you wouldn't just buy a whole SSD at the current prices is beyond me.

Hybrid drives, I would say, too. The 8gb of ssd are not accesible like normal s/hdd, i.e. you cannot partition them. Used as a buffer layer, it speeds up a little bit.

Theyre a cache drive

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate your help

I used to have a 16GB SSD cache, which made the disk feel about twice as fast. I don't have any measured real boot time (*) tough, so can't give any numbers.

The SSD cache died recently and the performance loss is downright painful. So: yes, it makes a big difference. But I won't get a new SSD cache. I'll go full SSD and replace the HDD instead. Makes more sense.

(*) By "real boot time" I mean the time from pressing the power button until either the browser or IDE is running and being responsive. The time until the login screen shows up is a completely useless metric.

@Grumpy Good to finally know the distinction.
Agree with your definition of 'boot time'. I've been there

It's probably cache drive/SSHD.

Thay "smartly" cache frequently accessed bits and those are delivered from the SSD part rather than the spinny storinator.

@nyjan 256 gigs still go for around 100 bucks around there. Not exactly expensive but being a student, not really something g I want to spend on currently. I have SSD in one of my laptop though. It's amazing.

Just had another thought: Don't a lot of chromebooks come configured like this, since they require a connection and store most everything on Google, anyway?