procedure to replace a hard disk and install vista

dear All
I have a 2.5 year-old Dell Inspiron 640M (the US model number might be different). I had originally purchased it for writing e-mails. Over the past 2 months, I have been using it for heavy work loads such as financial modelling.

My typical use is :
2-3 large spreadsheets open
4-5 PDFs open
8 tabs of web pages on CHROME
VLC to play music in the background.
Access + VBA editor.

Although I have 2 Gb and a 1.66GHz processor (T5500), I find the HDD LeD blinking all the time and I have to really wait for the OS to refresh the screen.

End of the story: I want to replace the existing 80GB 5400 RPM disk with a 64GB SSD.

Please tell me how I should:
* install Vista.

I read somewhere that DELL really made the partition layout complicated. I am not interested in Media Direct, recovery partitions (I take a backup every night using EMC retrospect). These will take up space and I will have even lesser space on the 64 GB disk. But if I have no choice, I might have to take this route, in which case getting a SSD makes little sense.

Alternatively, has anyone tried using an eSATA external disk (via an Express card) and has this improved READ and ACCESS speeds?

THanks in avance

 

your (new) 64GB SSD would be empty...

if you don't want any dell crap (MEdiaDirect, dell diagnostic partition), just insert the vista CD and click install

 

Also, somewhere around here is a registry edit to turn the media direct button into a web browser loading button and the right context button (next to the right ctrl key) launches calc. A nice utility for those who don't want media direct.