Re: SSDs? Too expensive for what you get...
You aren't really comparing like with like.
That's like saying that buying an old bus is cheaper than buying a Lambo on a cost per seat basis.
You can buy a 240GB Samsung SSD for ~£150
A "high performance" HDD such as a Hitachi ULTRASTAR 300GB for £170 quid.
So they cost about the same.
Only one offered 100times the random IO transaction rate of the other and offers IO latencies (the real killer for many apps) a tiny fraction of its competitor.
If you're buying 3TB drives you aren't in the slightest interested in random IO performance.
Oh and you really wouldn't want to put a 15Krpm disk into you laptop.
If you are after cheap mass storage for large amounts of data, I guess you're storing video if you're looking at 3TB drives, then yes spinny things are cheaper. and a bogo cheap HDD can write 2 HD TV programs and read another without any problems.
Taking your example of a 250GB disk for £50 or mine of a 250GB SSD for £150 then the price difference in the cost of your laptop is only £100. Well, most people are going to notice more of a performance improvement out a ton spent on the SSD than they would spending the same amount on any other component. And laptops aren't normally used for performance sensitive mutltitreaded randon IO.