Is 256 gb flash storage enough on the retina display Mbp?

I am going to college and can't decide between the baseline 15 inch MacBook pro with 500 gb hard drive and the baseline retina display. While the speed and slender design of the retina display are certainly appealing, I am concerned that the 256 gb of flash storage will not be enough in the long run. I mean, I will not be running the entire adobe suite, but I will definitely be running the entire Microsoft office for Mac suite (word, excel, powerpoint, and outlook),as well as the adobe photoshop cs6 extended program. I will also run iTunes with a library of roughly 800 songs, as well as various apps that may exceed 30 to 40 gbs potentially. I will also store some photos and movies on there, and I am looking into getting an external hard drive to backup my computer to. So for your basic college student that will mainly be using office, surfing the web, and using iTunes, is 256 gb enough? I also am seeing a lot of complaints about defective retina display computers on the discussion boards, and I was wondering if those are making up a large portion of retina displays being sold.

It feels to me like Apple intended the Retina MBP for users who would be using cloud storage a lot more than people have in the past. For example, if your media is purchased from iTunes, it stays in the cloud instead of taking up space on your hard drive, so you don't need as much onboard storage.
I've often wondered if this was wishful thinking on Apple's part, hoping that people would start using iTunes and iCloud more, and it remains to be seen if that will be the case. I really think the Retina MBP was designed for that.
I'm not trying to discourage you from getting one. It's more like, I'm hoping these thoughts (and I may be wrong), will help you make a good decision based on your usage habits. It's an awfully large investment, after all, and one that you'll have to live with for a long time.

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