This laptop or that laptop.

[Buffalobiian]

@David: I can have multiple things open without the PC/laptop grinding to a halt. To me having enough ram for the stuff you're doing is arguably more important so that you're not constantly swapping stuff between the RAM and the HDD. Having an SSD will offset this I suppose, but more RAM does seem to be a cheaper option. Manufacturers these days don't seem to mind sticking in 4GB of ram as a tag line.

[David75]

I think David invested a sizable sum in some SSD manufacturer's stocks.

Nope, but I did finally buy a SSD

@David: I can have multiple things open without the PC/laptop grinding to a halt. To me having enough ram for the stuff you're doing is arguably more important so that you're not constantly swapping stuff between the RAM and the HDD. Having an SSD will offset this I suppose, but more RAM does seem to be a cheaper option. Manufacturers these days don't seem to mind sticking in 4GB of ram as a tag line.

I was thinking about illustrator and its hoggish behavior, even with 4GB of ram. You agree with me that 4GB is the limit for a budget laptop, as 2*4GB sticks would be too expensive as most (if not all) laptops have only 2 ram slots available.
Then I adapt the strategy to a smaller SSD and find a way to store data, be it in a bay adapter, dual bay laptop, or external HDD.

As of yet, I see no other alternatives, thing is trying the solution costs. Oh and unfortunately, SSDs go with Win7 for optimal data management reasons (trim for example) or linux... but since we're talking about illustrator it is a M$ environnement.