Any real-life experience using SSD yet?

Question

In my mind playing around with a demo unit in an Apple store isn't all that useful, and the benchmarks don't provide a real-life story. Anyone have an SSD they've used - at home, or office, in a real-life situation - yet?
What're your impressions re: speed? Is there a noticeable boost over the standard HD unit? Does it seem MacBook zippy?
Any feedback - good or bad - would really help!

Answer 1

Think of SSD as a grown-up version of those flash memory sticks you slip into your Mac’s USB ports. Instead of storing data on spinning platters, as a standard hard drive does, SSDs store data in solid-state memory—either NAND flash memory or SDRAM. Increase that USB stick’s capacity and add an ATA or SATA interface, and you’ve got an SSD. SSDs seem like the perfect mass storage devices for a notebook. They have no moving parts, so they’re less susceptible to damage from the shocks and jolts of travel. SSDs can withstand 10 times as much impact as a standard hard drive. They also deal well with vibration. Then there’s an SSD’s parsimonious power consumption. Powered down, SSDs consume virtually no juice—somewhere around 0.05 watts. Even when operational, an SSD draws only 1w or so—about a third the consumption of a comparable hard drive. In terms of seek times and throughput, SSD performance is about equal to that of a standard hard drive. But SSDs turn on instantly: They don’t have to spin up platters as hard drives do, so they reduce computer boot, restart, and wake-up times substantially. In addition to being sturdier, more power efficient, and faster than standard hard drives, SSDs are also slightly lighter and can, if necessary, be molded into different form factors to fit tight spaces. The circular platters of a hard drive don’t allow for that kind of design flexibility.