Unlike with hard drives, automatically defragmenting SSDs is not recommended because it can prematurely wear them out. Windows 7 turns off defragging by default.

Fortin said the performance degradation is not as serious as the freeze-ups. "We do not consider this to be a show stopper," he wrote. "We don't expect users to notice the drop during normal use."

Disk compression is also not recommended for heavily-written data such as Web browser caches or e-mail files, Fortin said, because of the potential for a slowdown on SSDs, though it is fine for non-heavily written data. However, some features, such as Windows Search and Bitlocker encryption, should work identically well or better on SSDs, Fortin said.

Computerworld's Lucas Mearian contributed to this story.