Like many other enthusiasts or consumers the price of an SSD has been too high, but I finally gave in despite all of the wonderful problems associated with die changes. As my back to school present, I just bought myself a wonderful gift... a Patriot 120GB Pyro SSD. Now I know that my laptop isn't SATA 3, it is SATA 2, but who cares... it'll be nice for a VM to write to disk really fast or have fast boots.

Thoughts so far...

• The windows 7 install was a bit rough, it hung on 0% expanding files forever... just waited, but it eventually moved on
• Had to turn off a bunch of Windows features, so be prepared
• Works with my HP Envy 14 (not Sandybridge) and has far better performance than the Samsung 640GB 7200 rpm drive.
• No 3.5' bracket.. not a big deal for my laptop, but considering the price...
• System boots in maybe 15 seconds?
• Programs open in an instant - fantastic

Without any tweaking I am seeing:

And as it stands now: