Just buy one. Ubuntu is very slim to begin with (~4gb) and it's very easy to configure the filesystem to keep core files on the SSD and other stuff on a magneti

Just buy one. Ubuntu is very slim to begin with (~4gb) and it's very easy to configure the filesystem to keep core files on the SSD and other stuff on a magnetic disk, e.g., symlink /home/kristianp/Music to /media/bighdd/Music or even just mount the hdd as /home. (Do they still make laptops with two drive bays? Used to be common but now that I think about it I can't recall any recent models with this. Maybe the Taiwanese brands? Asus, MSI, etc?) I have a 16gb drive in my wife's netbook that has plenty of room still (no big music collection, though.) Our home computer has an 80gb drive, 70gb for Win7 and 10gb for ubuntu. Just to give you an idea, next time you boot up Ubuntu (karmic) watch the splash animation, the one that says "ubuntu" with a pulsing white progress-bar like thing underneath. The animation only cycles once and then gnome is instantaneously loaded and sitting idle (autologin is on.) Rebooting between Win7 and Ubuntu is like switching between Firefox and IE on my old computer. If you can afford one now, just buy it. If you wait for the "sweet spot" between price/performance/capacity you'll probably be waiting for a while. They'll be a better value in the future, but that will always be a case and it doesn't mean they're not a good value now.