While SSDs aren't that much faster at sequential access than top of the line hard drives, they asbolutely blow 15k drives out of the water when it comes to rand

While SSDs aren't that much faster at sequential access than top of the line hard drives, they asbolutely blow 15k drives out of the water when it comes to random reads and writes. And random reads and writes are basically the most common access pattern on most PCs - load a program, and tons of DLLs and config files are loaded as well. Compare the just released Vertex 3 with a Seagate Cheetah - at the same $/gb. The SSD has 5% the latency of the 15k rpm drive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706&cm_re=vertex_3-_-20-227-706-_-Product http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148280 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148... This isn't just spec sheet or benchmarking bullshit, either - real world performance for random reads and writes really is that much better. Of course, SSDs are only worth the price if you're limited by drive IO - and as stated elsewhere in this thread, that's not necessarily a given. But if you are limited by IO, and you're looking for a performance drive in todays market, unlike just two years ago, 15k rpm drives are dead in the water unless you need 600+ gb.