Costs of SSD dropping precipitously–VERY fast120 GB drives can be had for under 500 USD. Check out OCZ drives for example–they even seem to have a leg up the better known manufacturers.

An 80gb SSD drive should adequate for Windows 7 OS and many other “necessary” software programs–including large graphics programs such as Solidworks or Photoshop—no waiting for previews to build–just move the sliders.

Even the current “fastest-largest” rotary drives will be selling for peanuts in under 18 months–they are dropping now. Use those “old” rotary “bottlenck” drives to hold your programs temp files and your data—80 to 120GB capacity for a primary drive is plenty.

Major PC manufacturers such as DELL and HP are behind the curve on offering these –and overriced too. HP only begrudginly (on year old info) is trying to sell them—but only on their high end servers.