On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
For the average user (web, email, music, movies, etc), is there going
to be any difference between these two drives? I googled and saw pages
containing answers, but they all merged into one mass of numbers which
frankly I didn't fully understand.

Simple answers would be most appreciated.

I think the simple answer is that the 850 will last longer. I saw 3 year
vs 5 year warranty mentioned somewhere - that'll be based on the amount
of data which can be written before the thing give sup.

Any other brand worth looking at?

(It'll be replacing a 5200 rpm drive in a new-to-me laptop running
Ubuntu for the shed, currently is is a bit creaky, am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the user
interface?)

It probably will. You could always run top and see how long it spends in
CPU wait - if it's waiting for the hard disk, SSD will improve things.

I've got a pair of 850 EVOs in this laptop - seem to work. We made a
database server run rather more quickly with a pair at work too, though
that wasn't intended for long term use. I'd get another if I needed one.