500 gb 7200rpm hard drive vs 128 gb solid state drive

I am considering buying a macbook pro laptop the 15 inch with the i7 processor. I will probably get the anti glare screen. What I am on the fence about is whether it is worth the extra money to get the solid state drive or the 7200 rpm drive. I would like something that might be faster than the standard 5400rpm drive, I have read these are laptop drives & they are a bit slower than a 7200rpm drive which seems to be standard in desktops. With performance & speed being very important to me; (I will be doing video editing in both standard def & high def) I would consider upgrading the hard drive to the 7200 rpm or the solid state. Another factor is the hard drive capacity, this is not as big an issue as I keep most of my content on external hard drives.
I need a little help in deciding, I am new to macs I am coming from a 7 year old windows xp home desktop PC. this will be one of my biggest purchases.
would I feel a big difference in performance getting the solid state drive? would it be a lot better than the 7200rpm drive? or should I just stick with the stock 5400rpm drive?
If anybody knows of any issues or known failures with one of the hard drives, I would like to be clued in as, this computer will have to last me at least 5 years, I am getting a one time allotment of financial aid from my school, I want to make the right choice.
Message was edited by: Sossity

I bought a 160 Gbyte Intel SSD, replaced the internal drive and that in a case to use as an external. I also have an SSD in my Mini. Using an SSD is a major improvement. Fragmentation is no longer an issue. Applications start up very fast, some instantaneously. The computer starts up in less than 10 seconds. In short, all operations requiring disc reads are lightning fast. There really is no downside, unless you are bothered by using an external drive for very large files (but then, you would probably use an external drive for that purpose regardless).
The Intel SSD may be above your budget (it is about twice the price for 160 Gbytes than the built to order with 128 Gbytes). If that is the case, just get the built to order and you can add an external drive for very little money if an when you need it.
I bought a 15" i7 and used it for a couple of days before I swapped the drives. In comparison, the stock drive made the computer feel sluggish. With the SSD, it is snappy, fast and responsive.
Others may disagree, but personally I do not believe that you will get anywhere near the improvement with a 7200 rpm drive. The SSD is tops. Also, by the way, they are silent, which I like.

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    Aaron Michalczuk wrote:
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