<p>I've been looking at some SSDs recently, and the specs seem pretty amazing. Incredible speeds, low power usage, etc. However, I've also heard some people say that the only benefit is faster boot time and application start time; applications don't run faster, the just start faster. Is this true? How has your experience been with SSDs?</p>
<p>The notable differences with speed is whenever data is being accessed from the drive. So when it comes to loading programs its because of the transferring of data from the drive to RAM, after which SSDs have no performance impact, except when additional data needs to be used (ex: Loading times in games or importing video in video editing software). Hence why they don’t necessarily run faster either. However, since many programs people use don’t typically put much stress on any part of their system, it is why an SSD is a popular upgrade, since it becomes an upgrade many people can benefit from.</p>
<p>If you are running Photoshop or Visual Studio or Altia or another big app you will see some improvement - I added a boot and apps-only SSD to my desktop and it’s mighty fast. If you use apps that do serious swapping, and you swap to SSD, that will help too. </p>
<p>The disadvantages - cost, of course, and if you’re into things like 10,000 RPM drives (only kind I use) the performance difference is not as much. If you’re migrating from 7200 RPM drives, you will notice it more. </p>
<p>Other things - wear and tear, and physical durability are good for SSD’s. My desktop has a 300GB WD Velociraptor 10,000 RPM data drive which is asleep for much of the time - the SSD (128 gb Kingston SSD V+)does all the work. </p>
<p>If money is no object or you run huge apps, or you want everything happening NOW, SSD is the answer.</p>
<p>Yea, SSD only benefits if you use the hard drive a lot. For example, my dad has a crap load of stuff on his business laptop like security, projects, reports, research, and a lot of other work stuff. It used to take him like 3 minutes to boot up. All his files would take eternity to use. He benefited from an SSD.</p>
<p>Using an SSD can make an App run faster depending on situation. The most popular one is video and media work. (which turbo93 said)</p>
<p>There won’t be any benefit doing internet stuff or playing games. Which is what I do… LOL. For the common college kid, I don’t see SSD as a good investment. When you have a professional job then yes.</p>
<p>My experience with an SSD has been incredible! Like you said, it definitely does improve boot time and load time of applications. Think about it as being faster for random read/writes, as oppose to larger file transfers. Actually USING the programs will be marginally faster with the SSD. The computer’s CPU (processor) and RAM is mainly responsible for how quickly the applications run.</p>