It's instant access (well, almost) and therefore useful in critical environments such as measuring and emergency systems.

What's more, because the components can be fitted on a board rather than having to be encased in bulky boxes, they become more portable and can be used in many more devices. For example, you may have an old laptop with a creaky hard drive that is maybe on its way out and in need of replacement. The traditional way to do this is to take it back to the shop where the technician will spend an hour or so removing the old drive and replacing it.

Now you can simply pop in an SSD mounted on a PCMCIA board right into the expansion slot of the PC - an instant hard drive.

Of course, as with hard drives the capacity of these devices will constantly increase but also just like hard drives the prices will continue to tumble making them the ideal consumer device that we can all afford.

Are you wondering what the buzz about Solid State Disks (SSDs) is all about and whether they're right for you? Read on to learn how SSDs are better than conventional hard drives and who should upgrade their desktop or laptop hard drive with an SSD.

Dell, HP, Apple, and other major manufacturers haven't made the going any easier either, as they offer little explanation to the many different upgrades that can be had on a PC. Let's look at the Dell XPS 15 first and then, the 15-inch Macbook Pro as an example.

The base price of the Dell is $800 and it starts off with an i5-2410, Nvidia GeForce GT 525M, 4GB RAM, and a 500GB 7200RPM HDD. The average consumer views processor performance and RAM as the two most important things to upgrade in a laptop, but au contraire, the SSD is clearly the best upgrade. So let's take a look; I could spend $300 to upgrade to the i7-2720QM processor, which gives 2x the processor performance, and upgrade the RAM to 8GB of DDR3 for $120. And you know what, what a waste of money for the 95% of consumers, who wouldn't be able to notice the difference between the i5 and the i7, as well as the 4GB to 8GB upgrade. Even a power user would be hard pressed to notice the difference performing the everyday tasks such as web browsing, word processing, and watching videos. Honestly, I've always been a proponent of a well-balanced laptop (thus, my affinity for the AMD Llano APU), as a well-balanced laptop gives the best performance in everyday tasks. So it makes the most sense to start by upgrading the HDD to an SSD. Even though it's a $600 upgrade, it's the best $600 upgrade you can make on the XPS 15, aside from going to the Nvidia GT 540M for gaming. On the Mac, things are a similar affair. The 256GB SSD is also a $600 upgrade, and in lieu of a processor upgrade and graphics card upgrade, it's definitely worth it.

Reasons why the SSD is the best upgrade

Why you might ask is the SSD the best upgrade on both PCs? Well first of all, the average user is immediately going to notice a difference. SSD Drive

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