External SSD

[#1]

Price of SSD seems to be coming down as expected and when it gets low enough I will be investing in an external SSD.
Is anyone else currently using an external SSD and if so, any useful tips to offer

[#2]

This is a very silly question I am sure
Why SSD as opposed to a normal hard drive

[#3]

I'd have thought, like Jim, a standard HDD would be more appropriate as an external.
Unless you needed a lightweight lower power device for travelling.

[#4]

SSD as an external / portable drive would also be far more robust against knocks and drops.

[#5]

I have an old 60gb ssd as a portable drive but its hampered from being in a cheap usb2 drive enclosure, if your thinking of doing it for performance of external drives then you need to think about the price of the caddy your planning to use as well.
for me it worked well but I only wanted something I could use on the move with my tablet and not loose all the data if  the transport hit a pothole  (which happened in the past)  so yes they can be great but it depends what your intended usage will be possibly cheaper though to grab a few usb sticks in the larger sizes http://www.mymemory.co.uk/USB-Flash-Drives just as a for instance on pricing of larger drives (there are other places with similar possibly cheaper prices)
as I say it all depends on what your planning to use it for and what suits your budget (for me recycling an old unit was free but a usb stick would of been better and cost more)

[#6]

Top priority is reliability , from what I have read ssd's have the edge compared to HDD's .
Am I also correct in thinking that data on an external S's would load faster

[#7]

certainly if you find a usb 3.0 caddy a sata3 based ssd will outpace any HDD by a fair bit but those things aren't cheap and the SSD's have a finite lifespan based on write cycles, with all that adding up to a pretty penny it might be cheaper to go with a USB stick which is smaller and cheaper for comparable size up to the 128GB range, and again if you  go for a usb3 version (and have compatible connection on your device) then it will be faster than any HDD in terms of load times etc.
like anything It will depend on what your using it for and how good your current hardware is as well as how good the new portable will be, for instance my old laptop had a very low spec usb2.0 connection and it barely achieved the minimum speeds for the standard so usb or hdd or ssd made no difference load time was always the same so if it wasn't for having an old parts I wouldn't of gone down the ssd route over memory stick