Damn, you have a very large porn collection. They'll run just fine off an external drive.

No, no, I stream that.

I can't speak for everyone but for me I got an SSD so Windows itself would load up fast. I simply wanted start-up times that were quick, for many this isn't an issue as they are running their computers all the time.. I sometimes have my computer running all the time aswell but during warmer times, etc I tend to shut down my main PC more often, I also like to be able to restart the computer quickly after updates, or when I replace the GPU & thus the drivers (especially since I tend to go Nvidia, then AMD, then Nvidia again then AMD, so on...)

I have the combination you speak of, 128GB SSD + 2TB HDD, plus some other drives, but my games go on the 2TB drive... I find the performance acceptable, at the very least it's quicker than having games installed on a primary boot HDD, at the moment the facts are clear as you said in your post, affordable large SSDs are still too costly, therefore the best trade-off for the moment is a combination of both. For this reason for the moment HDDs will be staying for now, SSDs will continue to drop in price meaning such a combination makes even more sense, which in turns helps lower SSD prices further.

Probably so. I have a hybrid drive on my newest HP laptop (which is not primarily for my use), but I don't really get any feel of extra speed on it compared to using a 7200 or even the slower 5400 RPM HDDs on my main laptop (maybe I would notice it if I clocked it).

For now I feel quite fine with the speed of the HDDs, so I guess I keep waiting for SSD prices come down. For now I value the capacity over the speed.

Ok. I turn off and on my PC quite often, at least once a day, and I feel fine waiting for it booting up. At least it is still 10x faster than either e.g. my Android tablet or smartphone booting up, which really take ages. :)

If I switch on "fast bootup" in Windows 8 (which basically is a hybrid hibernate mode), Windows boots up in mere seconds with a HDD. But I've disabled even that due to couple of unwanted glitches I had with it, so I am waiting the full time for Windows to power up and load. I guess I am just a patient kind of guy then (except with those Android devices, hence I rather keep them powered on all the time; but the stupid Huawei phone eats the battery in a day or two anyway even if I do nothing with it, so I still have to reboot it quite often).

I understand where you're coming from, I'm similarly patient as I also use my Laptop every day which has a HDD. (I also value space over speed in this case) & before that I was similarly fine waiting the load up time for my main PC without a SSD, that said however I felt the desire to try a SSD + HDD combo for my main PC when upgrading to see how it worked out & I did find it very nice being able to have Windows fully loaded & usable within seconds.

I read about the fast bootup feature of Windows 8, it sounded quite promising but alas I've not migrated to Windows 8 so wouldn't actually know how well it works. May I ask what kind of glitches you experienced? Sometimes handy to know these things.

Don't feel bad about not migrating to Windows 8. The backside is well done, but the UI is so bad that it borders on the infuriating. Even after months of using it, getting to the point where I am genuinely accustomed to it, it's a much worse UI than Windows 7 for laptops or desktops.

Best fast bootup out there, though, I think is the ASUS quick boot. On a fully magnetic mechanical drive my laptop boots up in less than two seconds in Windows 7, which is great. Add in the 11.6" form factor and there's no compelling reason to carry around a tablet when I've got a fully-featured laptop in the same space.

That's why you install Classic Shell and just kind of get best of both worlds
It tends to skip the BIOS screen and just jump straight to loading Windows, but I've never seen it skipping OS selection somehow. At any rate, it is way faster than my Win7 install and directly in the OS, you have a restart to BIOS option, which is fantastic.

Basically the fast bootup is a partial hibernate mode, and it is enabled by default. That's why you hear the wonderful stories of how much faster Windows 8 boots up compared to Windows 7. :)

I had two problems with it, which probably don't affect most users:

- Since I have Windows 7 and Windows 8 installed side by side, "fast bootup" on Windows 8 had the bad habit of corrupting files on the Win7 partition. This was a known problem, I don't know if MS ever fixed it. I presume it will not affect you unless you have some older Windows installed on the side.

- On my PC (ASUS G75VW), fast bootup somehow prevented me from booting up to BIOS/UEFI setup. Some other ASUS owners running Windows 8 reported similar problems on the ASUS forums, and some noticed that when they restart Windows, then they were able to get there (when you run Win8 restart, then it boots the PC up completely, without the partial hibernate). So switching off fast bootup fixed this too.

I recall hearing also that if you have e.g. Linux installed beside Windows 8, fast bootup may make it trickier to boot to Linux. Not sure though, I haven't installed Linux on this PC, at least not yet.

But I guess for most Win8 users the fast bootup is fine way for minimizing the boot up time. A bit like using hibernate instead of shutdown would be for Win7/Vista/XP users, I guess.

I perhaps would have if it were still in the time-period where it were cheaper, but now it's more expensive the only chance at the moment is if I were to get another laptop which has Windows 8 already installed. I hear alot about the UI but I think it's one of those things that I won't truly appreciate it's frustrations until I experience it... Then I'll be annoyed with the rest of you!

I've just read up about ASUS FastBoot, so it does indeed work as advertised? That's pretty cool.

I don't dual boot anymore, back when Vista was new & devices had next to no 64-bit support I dual-booted Windows XP & Vista until 64-bit support increased but once Windows 7 was released I jumped to Windows 7 & have stayed with it since. Regardless I didn't know about the issue & I wouldn't have looked it up, so it's good to keep in mind for future reference, thanks for that.