One interesting side effect of having a legitimately fast SSD is even though you save power power on not spinning a platter around you can end up using that power (or more) with increased CPU usage. Ex: Semi-Random reads from mechanical drive might be pulling data ~40MB/sec on a good day... the CPU doesn't have a lot to process at once or just does in chunks so all that nice power saving tech comes into play (reduced clock or cores or what have you). Now, pop an SSD in and start getting 300-500MB+ semi-random read speeds and your CPU will find itself a hell of a lot more busy having to actually process all of that.

It's a good "problem" to have, if you can even call it a problem ;)

The advantage of this is on the technical side, and it's for those who mix the sound. Watch the middle of the video again. With the sounds being object oriented they only have to make *one* mix. When it is passed down to the theater they present the mix as they can with what they have. This is quite brilliant from a workflow perspective and can end up saving studios money as they theoretically shouldn't need to waste time testing and optimizing the downmixes anymore (except for other formats like DTS).

Sure the gimmick factor is still there but hell I'd love to hear it in a true IMAX theater.

Can we also cite where in the Constitution the President has the right to execute "executive orders" and why anyone has to follow them?

While you appear to have a solid technical knowledge base, it is clear you have little to no practical knowledge or experience with SSDs other than off the cuff comments you've read here or there.

Let's go through some of your misconceptions shall we...

Price. Yes they are more expensive than mechanical hard drives. But the speed boost is substantial and worth it. I remember paying $200 for a 30GB HDD a long time ago. Now I can get a 128GB SSD for $160. My 128GB Crucial M4 is limited by my 3Gbs SATA 2 connection. It maxes out at ~280MB/sec for reads due to the pipe. It is actually much faster than that (over 400MB/sec fast). Pretty amazing difference for the otherwise slowest piece of hardware in any computer. Plus with TLC NAND arriving drives are going to start getting cheaper. Pair the cheaper flash with more mature controllers and within the next year or so SSDs will be in their prime.

Yes they are not tolerant of vast amount of write cycles. That is what wear levelling and TRIM are for. Even if new 25nm MLC flash could *only* handle 3000 write cycles, do you think you will ever use it that much? Highly unlikely. New Intel drives in the worst case scenarios running MySQL databases are still expected to last for a few years. Are home users ever going to continuously do 1TB of writes per day on an SSD? Most enterprise systems won't even touch that.

Mostly wrong about the swap file. Microsoft recommends putting the pagefile onto an SSD. See: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Take a look at SSD caching. In particular Intel Smart Response. It's a great way to get the speed benefit of SSDs much of the time with a lower cost.

You are dead wrong about SSD speed. Where did you even come up with those numbers? My USB 3.0 32GB flash drive reads at over 120MB/sec. As already stated my SSD totally maxes out 3gb/sec SATA: something mechanical HDDs can only do in RAID. And that's only talking about sequential reads/writes. I dare you to open up firefox, photoshop, and start a 1080p movie off of a mechanical HDD, and then off of an SSD. Access times on SSDs are near instant. See http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/20

Yes SSDs are still relatively young and immature in some areas. That doesn't change the fact that support for them is substancial and they are above and beyond mechanical drives in anything related to performance.

I got my WD Live for $80 about a year or so ago. Plays 1080p mkv flawlessly off of a samba share from a linux server. It just works.

Looks different and a little more expensive then mine, but probably still worth getting: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136997

The real problem is that no one is taking the short amount of time it would take to research Gen IV+ reactor designs (CANDU & LFTR) that do not have these problems you speak of. LFTR can power humans for millennia. It can be mined in space and power us travelling through the stars. The storage time for the final waste put out by LFTR is in the hundreds of years, which we can develop sufficient containment for.

If you think comments like this help a healthy scientific debate then by all means continue.
However, if you like to be the same as the side you berate and hurl insults with whatever you pull out your arse then please proceed.

You're claiming that we can damage the Earth beyond a point which it can repair itself? Really? This planet was around long before us. This planet will be around long after us. Even if everything about AGW were true and we wiped ourselves out, the earth would survive. It would adapt, repair, and thrive.

The Earth has been in climate change since it was first formed as a planet. The Earth has seen VAST changes in temperature while humans and other life has lived on it. Why is right NOW the perfect temperature that needs to be kept preserved at all cost? Why not 500 years ago? Or 1000? or 10000?

But that doesn't even matter. The post you replied to already proved your point wrong. Read it again.

I didn't know this was out. I'm glad I read through this JUST so I could see that comment. I do believe I'll have to pick this up on my way home tonight :)