I finally got the opportunity to get my hands on a notebook PC with a 64GB solid state drive.

Sadly, it wasn't the mind-blowing experience I had hoped it would be.

After months of delays, the folks at Toshiba were able to sned me the very adorable Portégé R500. Look for a review here in the next week or so.

At 1.72 pounds, it was hard to believe when I received the unit, that what I had in my hands wasn't simply a toy, but a real machine; a machine with a solid state drive.

Never mind a manila envelope, I was able to cram this cutie pie into a smaller FedEx mailing envelope, and a larger-sized handbag.

Still, with a hefty price tag of $2,699, it was with good reason that I figured the power savings I stood to gain from this machine, and its fancy solid state drive, would be immense.

In fact, it wasn't.

Powering down the machine into hibernation mode took 15 seconds on three seperate tries (after restarting the machine) and 15 seconds to wake-up from that mode on the first and second try, but only 12 seconds on the third try.

Not bad, right?

But, when I reviewed Toshiba's satellite Pro A210, a sub-$1,000 machine with an ATA drive, it took approximately 5 seconds to go into stand-by and two seconds to wake-up from that mode.

Going into hibernation mode, the system took approximately 20 seconds, and 20 seconds to wake-up from that mode.

Meanwhile, my IBM ThinkPad x31 takes 45 seconds to go into hibernation mode and 20 seconds to wake up. My ThinkPad matched the A210 in terms of the time it took to go into stand-by mode (5 seconds) and to wake up from that mode (5 seconds).

I also used the PassMark Software PerformanceTest 6.1 and the highest score S5003 the R500-S5003 received was an overall score of 314.1, which when compared to machines of similar caliber, was on the low side.

This is also only a partial score, because the performance software couldn't test the unit's optical drive, since the S5003 doesn't have one. Still, that at best would only add an additional 50 points to the overall score.

The IBM ThinkPad T42, which also runs on 1GB of RAM, has an overall score of 300.3 and is priced under $1,000. Meanwhile, Lenovo's powerful ThinkPad T61 scored an impressive 661.3 and retails for about $2,500.

I am not alone in my first impression (which makes me at the very least feel I am not doing anything wrong, per se). Word on the blogs is the MacBook Air unit configured with a 64GB solid state drive.Ars Technica ran a few benchmarks of its own on the machine and found performance to be only slightly better than the conventional ATA drive.

Remember, solid state drives are expensive.

In the case of the MacBook Air, you are plunking down an extra $1,300 for that configuration.

For the Toshiba Portégé R500 with solid state drive, you have to shell out an additional $650.

Now, in terms of ruggedness, another perk of solid state drive flash technology, time has yet to tell whether this could make the added price well worth the cost.

But on the whole, I know I am not going to pay that kind of money, just yet, when the overall performance differences between SSD and ATA appear to be minimal.