izzikio_rage
Technomancer
I've used an SSD based laptop and while it does have great battery life and almost instantly opens up files anywhere on the disk (since there is no head that needs to search out the proper place on the platter and then start reading) it does not really give that much of a real world performance boost. In fact most of the time your files (RAW/jpeg) will just be sitting on the computer not being used. So I don't really think that not going for an SSD will make that much of a difference. If you do have the funds however then get a small SSD 160GB or so, keep all editing software and other programs on this and keep your files on a much cheaper external drive