Best SSD for particular laptop

Intel really is superior to any SSD; this is due to their controller and firmware which provides for much higher performance especially at random write.

While many look at MB/s scores; this is totally NOT the reason SSD are so fast. To demonstrate an (extreme) difference between HDD and SSD, i will show this benchmark:





This last benchmark is interesting; even though the Intel SSDs have 'only' 75MB/s sequential write performance, which is considered low, it totally blasts away the competition in this synthetic though important benchmark.

This low-level performance is the reason SSDs are so fast in real applications, and you should look carefully at real benchmarks to determine which one is the best. I can tell that Intel leads by a good margin, the Vertex with Indilinx controller is a good second, but its not that much cheaper than the Intel SSDs so to me the choice is clear; if you are going to pay premium prices; at least make your dollars count.  

Ahhh thanks sub mesa. Do those Intel drives clean up their garbage so they will keep performing well over time?

Guess its worth it to spend $20 more and get 20GB more and also get better performance. I just find it hard to believe after seeing some videos online showing 1 Vertex drive popping open Apps like a mofo.

Garbage collection is done using TRIM function, which is very new and only available if you update the firmware; this firmware is very recent and there were some issues with it.

But you can do this later you don't need to activate it at the very beginning; it will only be useful after some time as the SSD needs to know which space is free and it doesn't know which parts are free if you deleted some files; it would still see this as 'used space'. The TRIM function serves to notify the SSD that this 'deleted space' is not used anymore by the filesystem so the SSD can use the free space to accelerate random writes.

The TRIM function requires Windows 7 and a firmware flash of the SSD drives. It won't be available in RAID mode, and probably also not in "IDE" compatiblity mode; your BIOS needs to be set at AHCI mode which is the "native" mode for Serial ATA. This mode does not work on older systems with Windows XP though.

Vertexes are not bad drives at all, but the Intel is superior to it, while being only slightly more expensive. That's why i recommend the Intel SSDs to everyone; it should still be useful in 10 years so its an investment that will benefit you for a while; at least two or three computer generations.