I'm pretty sure that same article had a comparison of the different manufacturers spare area around the time that wear leveling started taking off in the first set of Sandforce based drives (Vertex 2 comes to mind). They all have spare area though it ranged from as little as 7% to 22%. Article might have been from Ars though.
Intel's have had a rep for reliable longevity and part of it was from increased spare area.
I'm not complaining or anything mind you. This pair of Vertex drives are my first SSD's and after the furor of people complaining about premature drive deaths I'm actually just wondering how long these things will really go before re-allocation finally goes above spare area. Spare drive is ready to go but even at this point with daily use I've seen no random failures. Knock on wood.
Edit:
http://online.hddlife.com/ssdlife/9e...64a8fc8e9e8d1f
Reads as a 32 but it's a 96GB drive. Working life seems to go by my last reformat and reinstall which is odd. Powered on time is longer than working life =?