Oh, trust me, Data; I'm as annoyed as H311, but there's nothing I can do about it except run through the RMA process and wait for a new stick, so there's no point in letting it boost my blood pressure. Luckily, I found a setting in the BIOS that allows me to run the RAM management in "unganged" mode, which means that the sticks don't have to be paired. Thus, I have 5GB of RAM for the time being. This also means that I can actually upgrade the RAM one stick at a time, rather than in pairs. I'll be able to get more RAM faster, this way, so maybe having found a bad stick was a blessing in disguise?

I'm not sure but I'd expect the memory to be running slower due to not dual channeling (LGA 1155, 1156) or triple channeling (LGA 1366). OK for short term but not ideal.

25 secs sounds pretty good. I run a 10,000 rpm drive and will time mine on next boot and post here. I think it's about 90-120 secs.

I didn't sit there with a stopwatch when I had XP installed, but many was the time when I would turn on my box, head into the kitchen for some tea, and come back to still sit there in front of the screen for several seconds before I could use the computer. Now granted, I didn't have to brew the tea (it's bottled Green Tea, after all), but the time frame was well within the 2 to 2-1/2 minute range. In that respect I'm well pleased.

Nice Dave, I hope too, that you have a nice and long honeymoon with your new Win 7 install, I bet even after its been installed for a while that its going to boot super quick with the SSD,

Hmm... I'm thinking it's about time to get one, how about we start a "Get Data an SSD Fund" 

Come on then, what's its WEI score.

The WEI overall score is only 3.9, due to both the fact that I'm using an older graphics card, and the fact that I've got 3 monitors, but the Disk Operations and Memory scores are 7.3 and 7.0 respectively.

7.3 for the disk  , that is a huge jump from our HDD's 5.9, very impressive Dave.

You know I was thinking of getting a 250GB SSD or something around that size but the prices are just too high, now Dave has given me the idea to get a 60GB drive just for windows, then later on get a 128GB or maybe even bigger if the price is right, for the games.

Hmmm, food for thought.   

I want one as a games drive as well and 120GB doesn't quite cut it. I'm holding out 'til it gets to 50p per GB.

My machine boots in approx 90 secs, 40 secs for desktop to appear. Win7 boots much faster than dear old XP.

Im think having two SSD's could actually have its benefits too, lets say the SSD drives do suffer with ageing, wouldn't it be the best plan to age a smaller cheaper driver that has Windows and the page file ect on, cheaper to replace and looking after your larger games and programs SSD.

I'm actually warming to the plan.

One slight concern is, will a 60GB drive actually be big enough, I have Win 7 installed since it came out on to a 64Gig partition and I only have 19% free right now, as with all MS OS's Win 7 keeps growing as it gets older even when you know how to clean up the drive and delete all that unwanted crap, I think it will do it but it would need a little managing as time goes by.      

Well, I'm finally at the stage of installing programs, rather than fiddling with folder locations. I had read an article on how to "move" the relevant folders that seemed VERY promising, so I printed it out, and set to work. What a mistake! I ended up having to re-install Windows a total of THREE TIMES! It did, however, lead me to find the correct way to move the folders, and everything is working great, so I'm happy. I'll try over the next few days to write an article that outlines the process, and add it to my blog.

You had to install it 3 times, interesting, Dave did you get the OEM version of Win7 I'm guessing you didn't as I don't think it would allow 3 installs that close together, but maybe things have changed with 7.   

Three installs with identical hardware profiles, in that short a period of time (less than 24 hours) actually doesn't raise a red flag with $M. However, change the hardware profile, even a tiny bit, or stretch that out to over a 72 hour period, and then they get suspicious. At least, that's been my experience with XP installs, and I see no reason why 7 should be different.

I hear what you are saying Dave, but the OEM version is very touchy with installs compared to none OEM, once you have activated the software you cant do more than one more activation with in a month I think it is, I have come across this problem with XP in the past, that's why I asked if it was OEM or not.

Yes, this is OEM (FAR less expensive that way, and technically, enough parts were changed to warrant calling it a "new" install). It may well be that what I've experienced in the past was due to my performing the activation as the very last step (even after updates). The activation process with 7 was completely invisible, so I'm not certain at which point it occurred, but I'm pretty sure it has. So I dunno.

I noticed that you can get SSD drives as small as 8 gig for about £30, just thinking aloud really but that could be an option to use just for paging, temp internet files etc. 

@ Dave, So my friend, you have had the SSD for a while now, how would you say its performing in Windows, is it as good as you expected or maybe even better, what has the experience been like?