Once you've gone SSD you can't go back
I have always been a patient person, so SSDs have not impressed me so far. Not at these prices anyway. However last week I managed to persuade myself into an SSD to make this laptop (1810TZ with probably SATA not-a-lot) perk up, now that I'm using it more often than I used to.
And my boot time (to usable, fully loaded windows) has dropped from just over two minutes to 40s, which is pretty impressive in this period while that boost still new and novel. However it is not life changing because I rarely sit and wait for a PC to boot. Overall desktop speed is boosted nicely, but not hugely, and I think my next indulgence will be to get a 7200rpm laptop drive, because I suspect the thing dragging this very capable "pocket" PC down was the 5400rpm drive it came with.
That will also allow me to try this SSD in my Sandybridge machine and see if 3/6Gb SATA delivers the life changing experience others report. Somehow I suspect not though, because that machine's fast enough in all respects that I'm not aware of any lag or annoying pauses even when I'm throwing huge amounts of data around movie editing. Boot time will surely improve, but as I said, I'm normally making coffee or taking a leak during boots.
As you say though, I suspect that once you get used to the extra snappiness of an SSD, normal HD performance never quite feels "right" again.
So I've a horrible feeling I may end up a reluctant rather than willing convert. In the mean time I can console myself with the thought that I might be able to use this drive on a Z68 chipset board to "buffer" a huge HD. But I stupidly talked myself into a 128Gb drive to avoid storage claustrophia, and only just discovered that the Z68 thing only uses up to 64Gb, and I'm definitely not going to be wasting £85's worth of flash memory!
Anyway, it's been interesting seeing what the fuss is all about, and this laptop is definitely improved even with its "old" SATA limitations. But improved enough for the average person with the average budget constraints? Not in a million years.
I bought a 2Tb drive at the same time, and plugged into a USB3 dock that is a real pleasure to use on my main PCs for fast, general purpose storage... at least in part because of the tremendous bang for buck standard storage offers these days.
It'll be a long time before SSDs can offer anything like that kind of bang per buck. So I am more convinced than ever now that SSDs are, indeed, excellent. But they are also still really poor value for money unless you have money burning a hole in your pocket. And there's never been a shortage of those people around here. Indeed I'm in danger of becoming one myself, though in my defence my PC habit is my only vice.... sadly.
Oh, and I'm a bit puzzled by the people who mention the silence as a feature. I can't remember the last time I was aware of a standard HD making any noise worth mentioning. The last noisy drive I had was a 30Gb drive, long since retired to the spares cupboard.