Experience with IDE 2.5 SSDs

[Gikero]

I want to know if anyone has used them, and what they think. Are they worth it for someone who wants to keep a old laptop working?

My grandmother is a retired teacher who managed her school's website. My grandfather bought her a Dell XPS M170 back in 05-06 to do just that. She loves it and says it has sentimental value to her. I am replacing the LCD. I upgraded the RAM to maximum supported (2GB) and thought about a new HDD or SDD. Obviously IDE is old, no longer made and slow by comparison to SATA. I ran Spinrite (level 4) on her original Hitachi 7200RPM 60GB drive and it passed without issues. I want to get her off XP but I know she won't use a Linux distro. I feel like Win7 is going to really tax the system.

I'm leaning towards getting her the SSD and making a clone to her original Hitachi, just in case. Just thought I'd ask. Thanks for any input!

[EmeraldFlame]

Pretty sure IDE tops out at a theoretical max of 133MB/s, so honestly and SSD would largely go wasted under those conditions. Most HDD's will be readily approaching that limit so you likely won't see any real speed benefits. Although depending on the drive, randoms may be a bit better with an SSD which would improve some load times.

Personally, I wouldn't spend the money on it.