SSDs should reverse this trend, hopefully before Christmas. I think the performance gains are massive for running a system drive on an SSD. Combine that with an M$ OS that lives up to the hype, and I think a lot of people will be thinking that it is a good time for a refresh of laptop and desktop, I certainly do. Once SSDs come down in price I think this will have a big impact on the market, the performance and capacities are already there, just the scale of production that is needed now. I have already upgraded my 2003 PATA desktop to a new one in readiness for an SSD system drive >128G, probably a RAID, with everything else (media, archives) on a good old spinner with a Terabyte or so? The laptop will follow once big SSDs are established for nOtEbooks.

"and even the imminent launch of a Microsoft operating system is seen as a beacon of hope."

Isn't that what they said about Vista?

"the imminent launch of a Microsoft operating system is seen as a beacon of hope."

Good gravy, have we sunk that low?

There's no need to wait. I already have a home server running off 64Gb SSD (more than enough for Ubuntu server) with the media files being served off 3 x 1TB WD Green drives in RAID 1. Mobo is an Intel Atom based microITX. 1Gb RAM and no optical drive. It wasn't particularly expensive to set this up. I don't know how much power it draws idling but if it is more than 50W total I'll eat a bug.