Not really. Sometimes you can find the same machine with different specs. Its like buying a car. Some have a standard transmisson with no A/C (been there done that) and see the exact same car with an automatic, A/C, P/W and all the other bells and whistles. Very much depends on how much you're willing to spend. 

I guess I'm just looking for a little more reassurance that other people configured their laptops with their swap space, cookies, etc. on their SSD drive (and they've been doing okay for awhile) before I go out and get a laptop with nothing but a 128GB SSD.

If you're talking Win7, it won't use an SSD for a pagefile last I read about it.

I'm not 100% positive on that, but pretty sure.

I don't think you need a pagefile if you have more than enough RAM to run all of your apps and Windows.

Yeah, I was thinking that.  I don't think I even want to thrash VM.  I would rather have the crash.   But there's still the temporary internet files from your browser. 

"If you're talking Win7, it won't use an SSD for a pagefile last I read about it.

I'm not 100% positive on that, but pretty sure"

Indeed, I was wrong - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Guess I should look before I talk, but usually I remember the facts right

I agree with everyone saying go SSD.

I have a one year old 17" notebook with a 160G Intel SSD. I have Windows 7, 4G actual mem, and an 8G pagefile on the SSD. The SSD is showing 98% remaining life. Not a chance I'll use all of that at this rate and I'm a fairly heavy user. I also have a larger capacity 7200 rpm second drive, the drive which shipped with this notebook. I use it for large one-time stuff such as archives and movies. But all my intensive HD use is on the Intel SSD. Boot time is so good that I still very much enjoy it after a year, it is still fun to boot Windows at this speed. A good SSD is hands down the best single thing most heavy computer users can do to improve performance, given that they've already decided to make the obvious upgrades to large (4G+) amounts of memory and to multi-core 2Ghz+ cpus.

How much do you think SSD goes down in price this year?  I'm in the market myself, but my budget is $1400 max.

I'd want quad-core 4GB ram and an SSD. 

Last laptop was a G71G from Asus, it's been not that reliable, but it's kept working otuside of one minor maintenance case.  6 Gigs of RAM was overkill.  I don't pay a lot of high-end PC games though, but I want what I do play to be fast.

I just picked up an ASUS All in One PC and sold my laptop.  (Well, am selling my laptop, the buyer isn't ready yet.)

It's got HDMI in so when my brother isn't here I'll be using it for its screen   Way better than mine

I can see snagging a 128GB in 2011 since I've already been waiting and the prices are becoming decent, but I can't see what I would actually do with it that would be all that fascinatingly different from what I'm doing now.

it's supposed to be much, much faster in accessing data.  Would make a real difference in some games.

I understand that, and that's fascinating, but aside from loading things faster nothing would really change.  It's not a necessity IMO.

People are talking in terms of 2 drives on their laptops.   Only the big laptops have 2 bays (?).   What about having only 1 bay and that is an SSD?

Or esata yeah.  I would never use USB 2 for a drive

usb 2 is BETTER than usb 1.1 OR parallel OR even SERIAL, but I have only seen parallel, usb 1.1/2.0/3.0 & esata drive boxes

harpo

yeah, it's also better than ps/2 ports and VLB and ISA cards.

...but what does that have to do with anything?

OK...I only mentioned USB as in EXTERNAL drive....use whatever method you want...but either way if you have only one bay for the OS SSD you'll probably NEED to think external as well.

Yes, USB2 is better than 1 ...and 3 is better than 2....

...and then there's eSATA as well.

I'm thinking in terms of the 1TB network drives--or really 1 or 2 SATA drives and fit them in those external casings that turns them into network drives.  But capacity is not really my primary concern--I'm more worried about the web browser thrashing my SSD drive with tons of writes.   Anyone know of any laptops that can take 2 SD cards at the same time?   That would be ideal, I'd think.

Found the laptop I wanted today

160GB solid state drive- I don't need a large HD, I'm only using 60 Gigs of my current HD.

Quad Core, 8 GB Ram, 1GB Graphics Card  (more then enough for the types of things I play)  17"

Got for just over $1200.