Tweaktown decided to run some tests and see if it would be worthwhile or not upgrading our notebook from a standard notebook hard disk drive to a shiny new SSD - in particular, the Intel X25-M 80GB SATA drive (with the latest Intel firmware for its X18 and X25 series of SSD drives, which is designed to improve performance). Here's a bit:

In every test we performed, the SSD came out in front and not by just a small margin, but a massive one. From the raw results under HD Tune Pro where the hugely fast throughput of the Intel X25-M showed its face, through to the much faster boot times with SSD installed and finally to the power consumption results where the SSD also showed its strength in managing to save power.

Should we just throw out all of our hard disk drives right now and be done with them then? Well, tech enthusiasts would most be all for that idea. However, there are a couple of things to remember before getting too excited.

At the time of writing, we checked Newegg and it is stocking the Intel X25-M 80GB retail model for $314.99 USD with free shipping. The Hitachi 7K200-200 drive is a little older now and harder to find, but we managed to see it listed for a little over $200 USD. A quick look on Newegg shows us that we can pick up a Seagate 500GB 7,200RPM notebook drive for about $140 USD. SSD technology is great - plenty of speed and super fast access time, but it still comes at a cost on the wallet.

How about the actual weight of an SSD versus a traditional notebook hard disk drive? It's not as much as you may think actually. The 200GB hard drive we used for testing weighs in at 115 grams and the 80GB SSD comes in a little less at 80 grams. Will this make a big difference to the overall weight on your notebook? Not really, as the average small notebook weighs 1Kg or more and that 35 gram weight reduction is very hard to notice, if at all.