They are definitely getting my attention as their price goes down. Its still not quite cheap enough for me to bite though.
I got a Mushkin Chronos 120 GB SATA III SSD for $113.74, so it's 94.78 cents per GB. Not too bad, obviously would be better if it matched HDD prices though at 5.3 cents per GB. All prices in Canadian Dollars before applicable taxes. deltatux
I paid almost $400USD for my M4 256GB back in October. Aside from faster boot times, I've noticed no spectular difference from my 2x500GB WD Caviar Black drives in Raid....except that I don't hear a pair of mechanical drives. For people like me that only have to worry about boot times when forced to reboot due to software or driver updates, there's really little argument for them. As available space decreases, performance does as well. So, unless you can afford large capacity drives or limit them to OS and drivers, you don't see the full performance of them for long anyway.
I just grabbed 2 Corsair F3 180GB's for RAID 0, as they were the only drives that gave me the perfect amount of space for OS and applications. Although, now that I look back the Mushkin 180 GB was a little faster, and few bucks cheaper. Oh, well. Could've bought just the OCZ 360 as well, but that brand has never been good to me (always had DOA parts, and had to RMA).
Garbage collection works in RAID0 on some models. Corsair Performance Pro for example. Also noticed the 256GB Crucial M4 i paid £237 for last week on Amazon.co.uk is now £197! Returning, and re purchasing!
Precisely what I just did.. jumped from a Vertex 2 80gb sataii to a Mushkin Chronos 120gb Sataiii. The difference in speed is large yet the effect in terms of W7 performance is pretty negligable, however the extra space in a 120gb drive this fast for $130 all in, not bad not bad
I'm hoping to purchase my next SSD later this year. In just general usage of the OS I simply find myself pulling my hair out whenever I'm on a computer with a mechanical drive. Things load so unbearably slowly that it's just frustrating to no end. And when it comes to games that dynamically load running them off of anything else is equally unpleasant. Skyrim in particular benefits massively since I hardlinked it from my WD Black. There's so much loading in that game that a SSD makes a tremendous difference in the gameplay. Bethesda games, being that I play them so much, are always going to be on a SSD at this point for me. But if I can get a good 80-120GB drive (for a Linux install) and a 256+GB for some more games I'll be set. Except, I need some storage drives too as 6TB isn't cutting it anymore so... Looks like I'm going to be buying a bunch of storage this year.
ssd prices have moved slowly. I was an early adopter of the tech when it first released paid like close to $400 for 64gb. really the main issue should be that hdd high capacity drives 3 tb models should be cheaper.
I'm so happy with my 64GB Vertex 2 that it doesnt matter what price new SSDs are. Didnt expect to be, I thought I'd hanker after faster speed, but its great. I usually keep 2 games on it that I am playing, enuff for me
Q2 of this year is when the RST driver with support for TRIM on RAID 0 is supposed to come, and we've got 2 months left in it so it should be soon.