You guys are making me interested in learning more about SSD's.
What are the benefits for having your OS on it? Is there really much that takes any time to load off a normal HD? For me, it seems the longest is waking from hybrid sleep and launching that first browser window, but after that, things seem pretty snappy. For typical usage, what is sped up a lot for the user?
on oem retail systems (laptop/desktop) with all the crapware installed, there is a big performance boot up performance difference between the stock mechanical drive and an ssd. even a low end ssd will boot faster.
i had the opportunity to real world test ssd's of various calibers (including refurbs) against mechanical drives in laptops and desktops. just looking at the boot process from power button to internet browser opening using automatic windows login, all of the ssd's were faster than the oem supplied mechanical drives using the factory images (not surprising). using a windows image created from a custom windows install and optimization tweaks, the margins in boot times between mechanical and ssd on desktop systems went down (didn't think it would happen), with the ssd's still being faster. in the case of the custom windows install, if 2-8 seconds of boot time is worth the cost per gigabyte to you, ssd is worth the price.
on the laptops, the boot time margins between ssd's and mechanical drives only marginally improved. over a period of a month of normal office use the mechanical drives slowed down where the ssd's stayed just as fast as the first day. file fragmentation doesn't affect ssd's like it does mechanical drives.
i don't personally know about how ssd's handle sleep/hibernation modes, i turn all windows power management off.
