I wonder if they can add some kind of high speed cache to speed up write times. Kind of like the way enterprise store companies like EMC address write latency. Unless of course they are already doing this. :)

I didn't say short lifespan; I said "a limited # of, or finite, read/writes," which even if it's really high (I saw some numbers once but can't recall them), what happens when that # is reached? Does the SSD no longer respond or is performance just diminished?

The Velociraptor values are a tad low, did you use IDE? Mine with AHCI and the WD 640GB

Western Digital 6400AAKS 640GB: 5086

HDD - Windows Defender 22.26

HDD - gaming 15.27

HDD - importing pictures to Windows Photo Gallery 50.72

HDD - Windows Vista startup 20.68

HDD - video editing using Windows Movie Maker 52.04

HDD - Windows Media Center 89.89

HDD - adding music to Windows Media Player 10.72

HDD - application loading 5.56

30% faster, twice the performance on Movie Maker. Other reviews show much higher values too :/

Your Velociraptor review also shows higher values: http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Western_Digital_Velociraptor_300GB/?page=6

I really want this as a start up hard drive. I thought 64 GB was low but then i compared to my 20 gbs and this drive should do fine.

SqUiD267:

I really want this as a start up hard drive. I thought 64 GB was low but then i compared to my 20 gbs and this drive should do fine.

 Same here. But I'd use it with a standard HD in RAID1. I don't trust the manufacturers and their claims about reliability, this is not a graphics card that can be replaced and life goes on

I too have heard or read this somewhere. Was this question answered or adressed?

"I didn't say short lifespan; I said "a limited # of, or finite, read/writes," which even if it's really high (I saw some numbers once but can't recall them), what happens when that # is reached? Does the SSD no longer respond or is performance just diminished?"
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I believe they do something similiar to a sector repair on a current-gen spindle HDD -- that is a specific area that is no longer writeable gets marked as "don't write data here" and makes another memory location writeable; not to say that there is GBs worth of spare space on an SSD but I do believe there IS MBs worth of it :)

http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=106

check it out

wasn't clickable,,, here it is again:

http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=106