Whilst you'd need to check with the supplier, on most laptops the SSD is user accessible so you could always upgrade that at a future date if the situation changes. CPU and GPU in particular are generally not upgradeable at all.

That was my point. He can add in an SSD at a later date once he's saved up some dough. The ODD will be upgradeable as well, as will the screen and RAM. But as stated, CPU and GFX are not and I would always get the most powerful of these that I could afford.

The Skyfire has an option for a second HDD. I would buy the largest HDD now and then buy an SSD for later and use that for programs/OS with songs/movies etc on the HDD.

I'll go for the 750GB for now, and then get an SSD if I manage to drum up enough cash another time.

Ok, everybody's made good points. Forget the SSD.



JJ's got a serious point though. The 500gb hybrid should still be significantly faster than the 750. Jus' sayin'.

So I'm best sacrificing that 250GB of space for the faster 500GB HDD?

I don't know the true figures. But for example if the hybrid drive runs at 100ms and the standard drive at 150ms, the hybrid will be significantly faster. The real question is how much it will change your life?

IMO the hybrid only seemed to help with boot up and load up times. It's had no real effect on gaming performance so far.

Having a faster hard drive means that data transfers from disk to RAM (and v.v.) can be much faster. However whilst having a faster drive helps with loading things into memory, it shouldn't have much effect on things once they're in RAM. It's only really going to affect loading times and, as long as you've got enough RAM, shouldn't hurt gaming performance overly much.

So IMO, if you're not going to have an SSD, a few seconds' extra loading time obviously isn't your top priority and you might as well go for the extra space on the 750GB drive. You can swap it out for a SSD once the prices get a bit less stupid.

I'm going for the extra space over the speed increase. I won't have to worry about deleting things I'd quite like to keep, and I can always put an SSD in at a later date to run alongside the other HDD.

Coolio.

Let us know when you get it and have a play with it

I've ordered it! Now for the long wait...

The longest bit is waiting for the bits to arrive. Once they started assembling my laptop, it had arrived 48 hours later. But it took three weeks to get to that stage.