Well I see all 23 of the avail STEC MACH8's are gone so either a LOT taking a risk or maybe they are decent for the right target workload.
I'm w/ you T_Minus 5000 read 100 write (OUCH) iops is certainly nothing to brag abt. Especially when you look at a s3500 80gb going for $40 and delivering these iops specs:
Random 4KB3 Reads: Up to 75,000 IOPS − Random 4KB Writes: Up to 11,500 IOPS − Random 8KB3 Reads: Up to 47,500 IOPS − Random 8KB Writes: Up to 5,500 IOPS
Not quite sure what to think abt that just yet other than STEC SLC v.s Intel MLC and ctrls of course.