From The Back Room

You can read all about the performance test at Infoworld.com pitting Imation's Pro 7000 solid-state drives (SSD) against the Western Digital's VelociRaptor SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drive.

The results speak for themselves: the SSD drives are extremely quick on reads, while the SATA drive is faster on writes.

However, the expensive price tag on the SSD drives will definitely mean that the mass consumer market won't be adopting them anytime soon.

What's the practical attraction of these SSD devices anyway? Mario Apicella describes it best on page 2:

However, using Microsoft Office on the Pro 7000 drives made me a believer in the power of SSD. With my stopwatch, I gathered some numbers: Excel started in a blink of an eye, less than one second on the Pro 7000. Notably, it took just a little longer on the VelociRaptor. I measured similar minuscule differences for other Office apps. Nevertheless, sheer numbers can't convey the feeling of smoothness and responsiveness that I had firing up Excel or Word from the Imation drives compared to the Western Digital.