I see. So the general rule, then, would be to either buy a laptop with one, or if having a desktop, to upgrade immediately

I guess it depends on the rest of the rig as to whether an SSD is worth it then? (even if the answer is usually going to be yes.) ... ?

Right. If you have an older mobo with SATAII, as I do, there is some gain with an SSD but the cost is high for what you gain. I don't think an SSD is a good investment on such a machine, but that's just me. You won't really get the full performance gains or speed out of an SSD unless you have SATAIII so I plan on holding off on buying one until my next build.

about that ocz vertex 4 Anthony bought, i hope it never fails because ocz's tech support is atrocious. i hate saying that because i used their ram for years and years in my rigs and put more in customer rigs along the way. when their customer service was phone based, it was great. when they changed to strictly email based support from china or wherever it is, it took a nosedive immediately. heck, i called corsair to ask questions about which drive of theirs to buy and explained that i was calling them due to issues with the ocz drive i had at the time and believe it or not, the corsair tech guy helped me get the ocz drive to work as it should. needless to say, i dumped that ocz drive and bought a corsair piece. i've changed capacities a few times in the last 18 months or so but stayed with corsair until the last couple of weeks. i bought a samsung 840 pro 256 and i'm loving it so much i may get another after Christmas and raid those babies.

wizard, i've had a couple of customers whose rigs have sata II motherboards in them who wanted an ssd installed and they have to yet to complain about the performance increases they saw. granted, most new rigs have sata III boards but quite a few people have sata II rigs yet. for those, i don't recommend the higher-end drives but the mid-range drives instead. for example, instead of a corsair force GT, they could go with a corsair force or corsair nova unit. the corsair nova series is great with sata II machines. that series is aimed at budget minded folks and if i remember correctly, it's strictly sata II. for its price, it's hard to beat.

I'm one of those with SATA II and got a SATA III drive in case I needed to transfer to a new MB. Love the improvement - I know I'm not getting the full benefit but the benefit I did receive was amazing.

Same here...SATA3 SSD on a 2 board...and as Pas says....you'll have no complaints re performance increase...

I'll see what happens, with the price drop and the lightning fast speed of the drive it was irresistible to pass up. As far as tech support I usually disregard those types of criticisms cause I cant really think of many tech support situations where I was like oh yeah man, I really need to call them back cause they were so helpful and the experience was so pleasant. Its always a hoop jump.

anthony, i hope you'll never need to use ocz's tech support. i sincerely do. as for the second part of your last post, the only two companies i've been completely satisfied with regarding tech support have been corsair and asus. gigabyte is pretty good, too. the worst i've ever dealt with was lian-li. getting a reply from them took almost a month. luckily, it wasn't my lian-li case that was dented (the guy said it was delivered that way but i didn't believe him). anyway, enjoy your ssd. i'm sure you'll be happy with it for years.

paul, you're using a vertex 2 drive, aren't you?

I had a SATA2 on a SATA2 board, upgraded both to SATA3.

I have the Agility 4 256GB on my main rig. SATA3...........very pleased.

I moved the Vertex Plus 120GB SATA2 to my laptop....also very pleased.

I hope it holds up, sad to hear that OCZ's support is atrocious.   

SATA2 on SATA2 mobo

SATA3 on SATA3 mobo

RND....try the sata3 SSD on a 2 board .....so it's the same SSD on both boards....then the difference will be less...

Yeah, I know. Wizard pointed that out too. I seem to have failed to keep a record of the SATA3 SSD on the SATA2 mobo. 

I can remember that the SATA3 SSD on the SATA2 mobo got almost the same speeds as the SATA2 SSD.

And the WEI didn't change much.  The SATA2 mobo took a dump on me, so I had to get the new mobo.

But we can answer the OP, YES...It's worth it!

Unless you're kona...hehe...

 I tell all my friends, if you want faster with what you got, just change to an SSD. Whether it be a laptop or desktop.

As many have said though, only if you are running a SATA 3 motherboard.