Cheaper SSDs can be had nowadays...

[Jerry Prsha]

If you have your computer in the car quite often and drive on rough terrain an SSD drive is a great idea. They're faster, vibration won't bother them like a spinning HD and they use less power.

Now the price is getting within reach: http://www.crucial.com/store/v4ProductFlyer.aspx

 

[Skip Talbot]

I'll second Jerry's recommendation. I pulled the HDD out of my new laptop as soon as I got it and swapped it with a SSD. It's one of the most noticeable ways to improve your computer's performance. My machine boots up in seconds now and everything loads with the snap of a finger. These drives are much smaller in capacity than your cheaper HDD's, so I recommend also having an external HDD handy to dump all of your video and picture onto. You can use the HDD you pulled out of your laptop and drop it into an enclosure if your laptop doesn't have room for two drives.

 

[Chip Redmond]

I have been in the market for a new laptop for almost a year now and have just a few requirements. It must have a 17" screen and contain 1TB SSD hard drive. So far, no such thing exists. In fact, there aren't any SSD's out there over 512GB that are anywhere near reasonably priced that I have been able to locate.

Chip

 

[Mark Blue]

I noticed Newegg has a 1TB model but it is so expensive it's ridiculous. There are some 512GB models that you could run in either RAID 0 or JBOD if your RAID controller on your future laptop has the ability to do so. I just did an initial glance and what I wound up with as a decent solution was 2 Intel 520 Cherryville models at 480GB a piece found here. These bad boys have the 2nd generation Sandforce controller and Intel took their time in the lab perfecting the firmware before rolling it out to the public unlike some companies who rush their products to market (OCZ comes to mind). This tends to reduce BSODs and other undesired effects from firmware that is basically nothing better than a beta version. Two of these would get you pretty close to 1TB and would be as reliable as you could expect. You'd just have to make sure your laptop had the capability for 2 hard drives and the BIOS would allow you to set them to AHCI mode, which most current models do. Install the latest Intel RST drivers and you'd be rockin' some sweet read and write times (I kid you not).