OCZ Vertex Series 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-1VTX60G

Pros: Insane, blistering performance e.g. Photoshop loads in LESS than 5 SECONDS!!! LOL! Silent. Low power consumption. Runs cool to the touch.

Cons: At this point, $'s per MB! Not really a "Con," but it's a bare drive, so pick up a 2.5" - 3.5" adapter and SATA Data/Power Combo Cable to install it in your case.

Overall Review: As others have said, this is bleeding-edge technology right now, definitely NOT Plug 'n' Play! I spent weeks on the OCZ Forum checking this out, educating myself on the technology, before I took the plunge. Because of the limitations of the technology itself - these drives wear out as soon as you start using them, like an old fashioned 12" LP or a tape - these are ideally used as an OS + Apps drive, data should be kept on a traditional HD. As of now, there are two basic firmwares, v1.4 & v1.41; my drive shipped with v1.4 which is optimized for Win7, XP will require a firmware flash to v1.41 and "Drive Alignment" before the Windows install. The OCZ Forum is your friend; there are detailed step-by-step guides to setting these drives up in almost any configuration, including RAID. To get the most out of your drive be prepared to tweak your system, including the OS & Registry; see the OCZ Forum for detailed instructions... and be prepared to be blown away!

Pros: Very fast Sequential reads over 180MB/s in a "used" state Sequential writes over 120MB/s in a "used" state Drive benched with AS SSD

Cons: None I suppose cost, but considering the performance increase you can see over a conventional hard drive they're well worth the money

Overall Review: The previous poster is treating SSDs like a scary, foreign, barren battlefield where only the brave and experienced dare tread. Maybe several months ago he'd be right, but not now. In my mind TRIM was the turning point required for SSDs to go mainstream. No need for manual garbage collection, you can just use the drive as you would any other and maintain a consistent level of performance. I didn't do anything special with or to this drive. I threw it in a system, installed Windows 7 and used it. OCZ has been shipping these drives with its TRIM-supporting 1.40 firmware preloaded for a while now. IT's only if you plan on using a MS OS other than Windows 7 or multiple SSDs in RAID that you need to concern yourself with flashing any other firmware. Aligning isn't a bad idea, but not necessary. Defragmenting is a mostly ridiculous concern when you consider that SSDs purposefully fragment files written as a form of wear-leveling. Very solid OS drive. Would buy again.

Pros: Reputation for games and applications is well-deserved. Even with the high expectations I had going in, I found the difference with games to be jaw-dropping and pretty amazing. Loading times for applications is quite noticeable. Basically plug and play with my EVGA mobo and I had no trouble installing the OS. As is often noted, the OCZ forums are excellent for any additional/tweaking details you might need. It's really not that complicated.

Cons: Not really a con, but it didn't quite meet my expectations for the OS drive. If you're the type to notice every second, it's faster than the WD 500 Blue I was using. Beyond startup and shutdown though, I didn't notice any big differences. I got the occasional stutter, which seems to be normal and didn't bother me.

Overall Review: I just don't care all that much about 10-20 seconds on startup. It might save me 30 seconds a week if I restart my computer twice. If I were tweaking my life for efficiency as much as my computer, I'd find a lot more places to upgrade. There are a bunch of tweaks and recommendations that go with installing your OS on an SSD. They're not difficult, but the hassle of moving browser caches and disabling some services wasn't really worthwhile.

Pros: I'll let these number speak for themselves: (2 60 gig drives in RAID 0 (ICh10R chipset - a must): ATTO benchmark Reads: 435mb/s Writes: 320mb/s Everything is pretty much instantaneous. Installed Widnows 7 well under 20 minutes. Boots in 18 seconds.

Cons: 1. Price - obvious 2. Pain in the you know what to flash - must have another pc or OS drive to use the flashing software with 3. Chipset. This is often overlooked by some who want to raid these. The ICh10R chipset does these well in RAID0. Other chipsets, not so much (I'm looking at you, nvidia) 4. Another possible issue for those who want to RAID - some hardware RAID controllers don't even support SSD's and don't work well with them at all. 5. There is no evidence one way or another on just how long you'll get to enjoy the insane speed before degradation. 1 month, 2, 5? Sure, you can flash the drive to get it all back, but then you have to do a reinstall because you lose everything. 6. If you want the insane speed, you have to do some tweaking. Especially if you are using XP. XP requires you to align the drives. Vista/Windows 7 users are set with this. But still, you have to turn off a bunch of services with all OS's. 7. If you are putting it in a desktop you need a

Overall Review: Do not let the "cons" dissuade you if you are contemplating these. If you have even a little working PC knowledge you can do the aligning and tweaking in a short amount of time, especially with all of the great guides on the OCZ forums. They aren't really cons, they are just things you should know before buying these and expecting to just plop them in and scream. Don't get me wrong, I tried that, and they are still waaaaaaayyyyyy faster than HDD's, but you want all the speed you can get, now don't you? Basically, they are new tech, and if you're buying these you probably aren't new to the "early adopter" scene. You know the drill.

Pros: Good high-speed drive. OCZ forums (and reviews here) helped me make sure I had the correct sector allocations, so the drive outran my 300GB Raptor drives, and provided a significant boost on my DB servers. Comparisons: 500GB 7200 RPM drive - 64.3MB/s; 300GB 10,000RPM Raptor - 99.3MB/s; OCZ 60GB Apex (with sector realignment) - 131.0MB/s. OCZ forums have detailed information for proper configuration and optimized performance.

Cons: Needs sector realignment (and other considerations) for best performance, and this information and necessary utilities are not provided.

Overall Review: Form factor (2.5") will require additional hardware to mount in most systems.

Pros: Fast reads, seems to be equal to a quick HDD on writes. Games load about 50% faster. No stuttering in Vista 64, like that seen with SSD's using the JMicron based controllers.

Cons: Still a little pricey but this drive probably offers the best value between price and performance with SSD's at this time. It was an inconvenience to have flash the drive up to firmware version 1275 due to a bug in version 1199.

Overall Review: Be sure to check the firmware version and flash the drive up to version 1275 (or whatever is newest) if yours ships with 1199 or older firmware.

Pros: Fast reads and very fast writes. It does not feel as snappy as my Intel X25-M, but it's a lot cheaper and the writes benchmark out much higher than the X25. I think the Vertex's 64MB cache smoothes out a lot of the kinks.

Cons: A lot of tweaking necessary to get full benefit out of this thing. Had to flash the drive and then use a special partitioning program make it really fly. Better have expertise with building systems when you buy this bad boy!

Overall Review: The Intel X25 installed flawlessly in both XP and Vista. The Vertex took about 3 hours of research and tweaking to get full blast. In the end, I'd say it works as advertised and is a great value ssd if you're willing to roll up your sleeves and have fun doing it.

Pros: Uber fast, works great under Windows 7 (with caveat, see cons). Functionally, I have zero complaints (but, see below).

Cons: OCZ Technical support leaves a bit to be desired. I tried to initially upgrade the firmware from 1275 to v1.10 (and then on to v1.30, the current version as of this review) only to find out that their firmware flashing software doesn't Windows 7. The one time I was able to get a technician on the phone, his solution was to mail the drives back to OCZ and let them do it. When I tried a few more ideas and they initially failed I tried to arrange to send the drives back, only I never reached a support person, so I left a voice mail and then opened a support ticket on their web page. They did finally respond to me support ticket (but never my voice mail), a day and a half later. By that point I had found an old hard drive, install Windows XP, patched it to SP2 and ran their v1.10 firmware update, which ran perfect (the v1.30 is available as an DRDOS ISO, which resolves the host OS issue all together).

Overall Review: Once I resolved the firmware issue, everything has been great (2 x 60GB drives RAID 0, Windows 7 Professional (retail)). Shame on OCZ for having such great products and less than stellar support. The fact their firmware upgrade tools doesn't work under Windows 7 should have been mentioned in the forums (or if it is, I was never able to find it).