so, why is my machine such a fast boot and yours so slow?

well, it's 32-bit. my hardware specs are pretty much maxed for 32-bit. but if you're running 64-bit then yours might be better. if you have an old machine, you know it. it's probably not why.

the reason is probably that i keep my software footprint to a bare minimum. i run regular scripts to clear out caches. nothing loads on start-up - not even backup services. and, the machine has xp on it.

i'm not disputing the premise. but, if i got a 25% increase in speed from an ssd, that would take my start-up time from ten seconds to 7.5 seconds. it would take my cubase launch time from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.

it hardly seems like it's worth the price, and the associated risk of using volatile storage on a system with very, very high data transfer rates.

what i needed was a lot of safe, permanent storage space. integrity. longevity. size. speed was not in the list of things that are of concern to me.