[tpm] OT: Are SSDs really worth purchasing to speed up our computing experience?

[Abuzar Toronto]

Hi there,

Sorry for the off-topic post, but I think some folks here would have
good advice on this question.  I've read that SSDs significantly
improve boot up speed, application startup time, etc.  Does anyone
have any experience with SSDs?

I don't think a few extra seconds for computer/application startup is
a big deal, but it would be nice to have applications that are more
responsive, run faster or more smoothly, like working in photoshop, or
being able to quickly skip through large images in a slide show
application, etc.

The system this is for is mostly used for photoshop, gimp, blender,
and a few video editing apps like adobe premier.  The OSes being used
are Windows, two flavors of Mint Linux, and Haiku.

Is the performance boost from SSDs really anywhere close to what
they're hyped up to be? Here's an example of the kinds of articles
I've been reading:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404258,00.asp

I've read stuff like 'investing in an SSD is the single most important
thing you can do to improve the overall performance of your machine,
because hard drive latency is increasingly becoming a bottleneck in
application performance' (not exactly those words, but you get the
idea).

Personally, I have a suspicion that code bloat might be a bottleneck
in application performance... but, whatever.

The hardware I'm working with:
- Processor: A8-3870K
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1723935&CatId=7239
- Motherboard: Gigabyte A75-UD4H
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=26_334&item_id=039551
- 8GB of Kingston DDR3 1866Mhz RAM

Any advice is appreciated.

Thank you!!
Abuzar