That's the truth. And at 200 bones for 80 gigs, that is getting into the ballpark of being affordable. I didn't have to scrounge much for mine. 80 gigs is plenty for me, for Creative Suite cs4, Office 08, and Iphoto and a few other apps. I have around a steady 49 gigs free. It's not too much of a bother to keep it there either. The drive I swapped out I use for Itunes and storage. It's nice.
The thing is, for any computer, when you put in a SSD you utilize your cpu more. You can offload data and really push things, so yes you sort of do get more power. Just more all at once. When loading huge, huge, images in CS4 it is a blessing. Cold starting Word takes a bounce. Restarting the computer takes less than 10-15 seconds and everything is just soo much faster. If I dropped a few grand on a brand new MBP or a Mac Pro, I would have my SSD in there pronto. I also got a tad better battery life and a cooler quieter system.
It all boils down to what you need. If you can make do like I do, and have a little enclosure for your old drive, to whip out when you want to use Itunes, then 80GB is fine. If you want to do bootcamp and game, then it may not be good for you. However if you are using your Mac to game, then chances are you have something more high end than mine, and you could probably afford to drop some more dough and get the larger X25. Then you could have a 30GB Windows partition or whatever you wanted. 80 works for me though.
When I use someone else's comparable Mac that doesn't have an SSD I feel slowed down and I twiddle my thumbs. Seriously, SSD's add _that_ much to your experience. OSX is already a snappy, great multitasking OS.. but to slap an SSD in an OSX computer really lets you open the pipes up. A worthwhile buy, especially if you do design work or anything heavy.
These new hybrid drives I see coming out are just a fad. They won't last. We are migrating to not having many moving parts. Memory is more efficient than platters. 4gb and a platter is just a copout. I take it back, I don't know if they will last, but I hope not. I do see SSD's getting cheaper each year. Intel has had huge success with theirs, so I hope they keep em coming.
All you peeps with the new i series macbooks, I envy you! I would love to put my drive in your computer and use Photoshop on it. ahhaha
I would also like to add that I did have a 7200 Scorpio Black and I got rid of it because of the stupid APM not agreeing with OSX and the clicking and loading of the heads drove me bonkers. I was already at a few thousand cycles after a few days. Lamesauce. They are fast drives, the normal 7200's, very quick. But SSD's PWN. Like My Little Pwnies.
