These benchmarks are pretty useless. Sounds like a potentially good idea, but I'll be impressed when I see real benchmarks demonstrating worthwhile improvements.

He starts off by saying that boot times have gotten significantly worse. Reinstalling the OS (not something I want to do) gets startup time back to the same as with a standard HDD. So far so bad.

Secondly, application tests are completely unscientific and show a lack of understanding of how the OS works. After you open an application the OS caches it so that it opens more quickly next time. The startup improvements he's seeing can be entirely attributed to this: Consider that on my MBP with a 5400rpm HDD Pages took ~7 seconds to start the first time and ~1.5 the second time (using the same technique as the videos).

This is a better benchmark of the same drive, but I still think the conclusion is too favorable without more thorough real-world tests: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/seagate_momentus_xt_...

Edit: Spelling and slightly overzealous language.