I disagree with krone6 for the OS only bit. You can build a system around a 120GB SSD (about $214 with the model I have in mind) and still have room for a couple of games. Most of them won't matter too much when you compare read/write and IO speeds with some of the fastest platter based hard drives out there. That being said, you can totally expect to be able to install Windows 7 and a few apps (games too) on those 120GB SSDs, and then install everything else (and store your personal data) on a separate drive.
My laptop at home has one of the Corsair Force 120GB drives and it's got a couple games on it (WoW, Sup Com, and Rift) and it's still got a few gigabytes free. My work PC here has the same SSD as the boot drive, and a Western Digital 750 GB for everything else that I don't install to the SSD, and the SSD has about 78.4GB free - I even cloned it from the old Intel 40GB SSD I had been using.
Now if you cheap out and get a low capacity SSD, krone6's feedback is entirely valid, but even with a $200 SSD, you can totally swing another $50 for a large 640+GB hard drive and still come in under budget. It's getting good now. Will get better later.
My laptop at home has one of the Corsair Force 120GB drives and it's got a couple games on it (WoW, Sup Com, and Rift) and it's still got a few gigabytes free. My work PC here has the same SSD as the boot drive, and a Western Digital 750 GB for everything else that I don't install to the SSD, and the SSD has about 78.4GB free - I even cloned it from the old Intel 40GB SSD I had been using.
Now if you cheap out and get a low capacity SSD, krone6's feedback is entirely valid, but even with a $200 SSD, you can totally swing another $50 for a large 640+GB hard drive and still come in under budget. It's getting good now. Will get better later.