x25-M is the fastest reasonably priced SSD, read performance is the best.
Vertex is a good budget alternative. Not as fast as the x25-m, but it beats it in one area which is sequential writes. (the 120GB model is the fastest)
the x25-E is the full blown balls to the wall stupid fast ssd with read speeds of x25-M, and the fastest write speeds as well, but it's mad expensive and comes only in 32GB and 64GB configs, which is netbook standards...
I have a question to ask: If you replace your hdd with a SSD, the boot time and the shut down time is referring to the OS boot and shut down time is it? Besides the boot and shut down time, any other speed that is increased by replacing with a SSD?I have the Intel x 25m 80GB in my 2.4 Uni MacBook It is Super Fast. It boots in 15sec and shuts down in 3sec. I had a MBA 1st gen with a SSD and the Intel SSD smokes that one.
I have a question to ask: If you replace your hdd with a SSD, the boot time and the shut down time is referring to the OS boot and shut down time is it? Besides the boot and shut down time, any other speed that is increased by replacing with a SSD?
for most users the most important aspect is random read and write. the intel is best at this. so if you can afford it buy that. but i am still waiting for TRIM. you may have heard that the SSD's slow down over time. TRIM is what helps slow down and maybe eventually stop that issue.
The Vertex has TRIM now (with latest firmware).
Just OS X doesn't know what TRIM is (only Win 7 and Linux have native TRIM I think).
OCZ might release a TRIM application later for OS X, they only have one for Win32bit at the moment.
The SSD's also load applications much much faster. load times within games are improved by about 12 seconds. this is also the case with files in applications like your load times of a word document will be faster. also any editing files you load within programs like photoshop or pro tools if you do music editing. things of that nature. the only big speed advantage that SSD's do not give you is the random writes. they are pretty on par with regular HDD.
Large random writes, you're correct. For small random writes, SSDs are still impressively faster.
Large random writes, you're correct. For small random writes, SSDs are still impressively faster.
If we forget about money for a second, like the OP said.
Than we can get two 64GB X25-E drives in striped raid 0 (removing the superdrive) for the fastest 128GB of laptop storage conceivable. It would be faster than any hard drive by a wide margin in every benchmark.
I have the Intel x 25m 80GB in my 2.4 Uni MacBook It is Super Fast. It boots in 15sec and shuts down in 3sec. I had a MBA 1st gen with a SSD and the Intel SSD smokes that one.
...load times within games are improved by about 12 seconds...
That's a misleading number as different games have different load times.