I've seen some ads lately for solid state drives (ssd's). They sound tempting. Supposedly much faster than a standard hard-drive, but without the noise, and mechanical wear factor. Sounds great! Sign me up, right?

Well, assuming you can afford these drives which are a little, or a lot, more expensive than regular hard drives, a little digging pointed out the dark cloud in the middle of the silver lining. (For a drink from a fire hydrant, read Anand Lal Shimpi's excellent article here. You can also watch a video about them here.)

The Up-Side

• First things first. Are they really faster? Yes! And no. Actually it depends on what you are doing, and the technology kinks have not all been worked out yet, so you could get a great SSD or a dud, depending on who makes the drive you get. Things like application load times are better than most hard drives, in some cases significantly better. System performance can seem snappier and the whole experience can be more fun. People who have decent SSD's love them. But again, it depends on who makes the drives.
• Noise factor: none! Imagine having a drive that made no noise whatsoever! The only sound coming from your computer room would be the cpu and case fans, and the occasional obscenity at getting beat again by your buddy in that online game! In any case, gone would be the annoying hard-drive platter chatter.
• Should last longer due to no moving parts. This remains to be seen; the drives are not old enough for real-world data.

The Down Side

• Since these drives are so new, not all companies have it right, and in fact you can end up with a dreadfully slow drive if you are not careful. It comes down to the architecture of the controllers on the drives; the ones Intel makes are hands-down superior, and you pay a premium for them. Avoid the ones with JMicron controllers. OCZ's Vertex and Summit drives are excellent value alternatives. I would avoid the rest.
• These drives will slow down over time, just like a hard-drive but for different reasons. You can read all about why here.
• Also, drive sizes are still relatively small, so don't expect to use them for data storage. You are better off using an SSD as an OS drive (your main C:\ drive) due to the smaller sizes.
• Additionally, the drives can only be erased and rewritten a total of 10,000 times. I don't have actual data on how many years the typical SSD would last with this limitation, but one source said it should last several years depending on usage.

Recommendations

• For overall performance, nothing currently beats the Intel X25-M and X25-E. Expect to pay a hefty premium for these drives, but they are the best.
• For value and acceptable performance still faster than the fastest hard drives, consider the OCZ Vertex and OCZ Summit. (I include links to NewEgg; I've had nothing but terrific experiences with this vendor. And no I don't work for them or get any kickbacks or anything; I just praise excellence when I see it.)

Conclusion

These drives are right on the cusp of being awesome. At the moment, they are just behind the curve technology and price-wise, and for most users I would advise you to wait another 6 months to year before jumping in. By then, prices and performance should be much improved.