Solid state drives are the most cost-effective laptop upgrade. I cannot recommend them enough. SSDs beat laptop hard disks by an order of magnitude in sequentia

Solid state drives are the most cost-effective laptop upgrade. I cannot recommend them enough. SSDs beat laptop hard disks by an order of magnitude in sequential read/write and two orders of magnitude in random access. I made the switch back in 2009, when the 80GB Intel X-25M was around $350. Since then, any computer with a hard drive has felt broken to me. If anyone reading this uses a laptop for development and it has a hard disk, please upgrade. The cost in time and frustration makes it worthwhile purely for economic reasons.