Us jaded nerdboys think we have seen it all and nothing much can amaze us, but every now and then you get a glimpse of a real revolution in technology and this new-fangled SSD (Solid State Drive) technology may sound like just a better type of hard drive, but when you slap it into a machine and go to work, the effect is literally jaw-dropping.

A full install of CS4 with every single option took well under 10 minutes to install, a process that easily take over an hour on most hardware. Granted the test system was no slouch, but breaking the tape in sub 10 mins is eye-popping.

The attached video gives you an idea of what performance can be like using the SSD… basically it shows VMWare launching, unsuspending a Win 7 virtual machine, clicking around in it and suspending and quitting the app… all in seconds. Those of you who use Parallels or VMWare will see the point if your eyes haven’t popped.

Now, I did cheat a bit since what you see in the video is a “warm” start, in the sense that I had opened VMWare earlier to do something, so a cold start will be a bit slower, but with a generous helping of RAM (the test machine has 4GB), this is the kind of responsiveness you can expect to see.

The other part of the speed equation is Intel’s new virtualisation support in their Core i7 architecture. This makes a dramatic difference to VMWare Fusion in particular (since version 2.02 takes advantage of the i7 advancements). If you are thinking of buying a new 2009 Mac Pro, this is the kind of virtualisation performance you can look forward to. FYI, the CPU being used is a Quad Core i7 which supports threading, so the OS sees it as 8 cores.

SSD tech is very dependent on the brand and the intelligence the manufacturer puts into the SSD controller. So not all SSD’s are created equal. Intel’s X25 series is the currently performance choice but it’s getting a lot more competition this month from OCZ and others who are racing to deliver capacity and performance.

In certain applications, a case can be made, even at the current very steep prices, for an SSD over more and more RAM. The SSD performance is compelling enough that for the last 2 weeks I have found myself unable to give up the test system… walk over to another machine and your first thought is, “what’s wrong with this machine, why is it soooo slow”

Tags: hard drive, Hardware, Intel Corporation, Intel X25 M, Mac OS X, OS X, Processors, Reviews, SSD, storage