I managed to upgrade my laptop with a slightly-worn SSD that we have been using for internal development. Overall, this is a sweet upgrade from a Hitachi 250GB 7.2k HDD, although the results are a bit different than I expected.
Cold boot speed is essentially unchanged, as are almost all application launches. I regularly defragmented my "old" 7.2k drive, so this result makes sense, although I was hoping for improvement!
The big advantages are with applications like WinDirStat (4x speed boost) or context switching between different applications. Outlook also is MUCH "smoother" and now I rarely want to smash my computer!
There is a very small improvement in weight (45g), but power consumption dropped a significant 4 Watts (from 26 to 22 Watts), which obviously has a positive impact on battery life. One of the unexpected positive side-effects of this is that the system ("CPU") fan now hardly ever runs. Combined with with the obviously noiseless SSD, my laptop is now usually completely silent!
Aside from the outrageous cost/GB (if I actually had to buy this thing), the SSD upgrade is the best change in my laptop computing experience since the original Pentium-M machines. Great stuff!
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