Intel just released a Drive Firmware Update Tool for its Intel X18-M and X25-M Solid State Drives (SSDs). You can read more about it here (info) and here (pdf) or just download the firmware update.

I have been using my Intel SSD for less than a month now and I did not really notice any major slowdowns, but thanks to this firmware I'm confident the drive will stay fast and very usable for our big projects. At home I'm pretty happy with my old crappy OCZ Core SSD (crappy because the J-Micron controller just sucks and freezes the whole PC after 50+ open files) because Windows 7 handles it quite nicely and my projects are usually small enough. The only annoyance is with ASP.NET web projects because the IIS is quite slow and because of other issues like the slow HttpWebRequest.

Maybe in 2 Months when the new i7 950 CPUs (replacement of i7 940) come out I will think about some new PC stuff for my almost 3 year old Dual-Core PC at home, but for now I'm pretty happy. The only real improvement besides the CPU I could make is probably more ram (which is pretty cheap anyway these days) and a much faster SSD like the Intel X25-M, which I use at work, but thats a little expensive .. maybe Intel will think about reducing the prices of their SSDs after many competitors (especially OCZ) are catching up and getting better and better.