Conclusion

Windows is started within very little time (around 10 seconds). With "started" we mean the time span between the first appearance of the loading screen and the fully usable desktop. Also the startup of programs is lightning fast. Programs like Firefox, Open Office and even Games start very fast. When you want to extract arcives you get a really awesome performance boost. The Intel SSD relly can't be compared to a conventional hard drive.

What about durability?

In the Intel specs we find a MTBF of 1.2 million hours. According to the S.M.A.R.T.-Data which were shown after the test we weren't able to find even one error. Despite Intels claimed MTBF is lower than those of other manufacturers we think that those 1.2 million hours could be a true value.

Application field of SSDs

The expectations relating to SSDs were very high and until today they didn't really achieve them. But Intel is on the best way to start a revolution in the storage segment. It will be very difficult to not to say impossible for a hard drive to achieve a preformance level this high.

Therefore the application field for Intels SSD is very wide. Further some examples: You can use it as a location to store a tranaction log of databases or even as a tablespace for indices to accelerate access to rows in a huge database.

Intels SSD could also be used as a big buffer for network based filesystems or as the basis of a mailserver. But we think the easiest and most effective way is to use it every day to start Windows XP and all the applications you work with an accelerate them massively.

With this sample - provided to us by Intel Italy all of the above mentioned scenarios would be possible without any problems. And just imagine what level of performance a RAID0 or RAID5 would make possible. Even in the enterprise level the advantage are enormous because there is nearly no dissipated heat that would need cooling.

Oh, one more thing: the price. 595 US-Dollar is a proud but fair price tag.

Authors: m.seiler@ocaholic.ch and m.buechel@ocaholic.ch