T400 Questions: About to Purchase

I have a couple questions about the T400 before I finalize my purchase.

1. I'm interested in outfitting it with the SSD option but was wondering how much of a benefit it would be for the price. I'm most interested in the facts that they have no moving parts, better performance, less power usage etc. Also, would it be a better idea to get a regular HD option then put in my own SSD? Would it be cheaper?

2. I don't plan on doing any gaming with this laptop but is there any drawback to getting the Radeon 3470 option and just running it in the integrated graphics mode? It'd be nice to have the option if I ever wanted to do some light gaming on it. I could also be misunderstanding this feature too.

 

1. The ssd will be faster at boot up and at loading applications, but the transfer speed is going to be about the same, and the battery life also, 20 minutes extra is the most I would expect. In my opinion it is not worth it to get the ssd currently, I got a 160gb 7200rpm to get me throu about 1 year, and then I will upgrade to ssd when they become faster/cheaper/bigger."would it be cheaper?" that depends on what kind of ssd you would get, there are cheaper/slower kinds, but for the one that comes with the t400 (I think its a samsung) its a pretty decent price, and you will be better covered under warranty

2. There is no drawbacks, maybe and extra 10grams of weight . In my SZ I mainly used the integrated, I used the nvidea about 10 times, it came in really handy when I was dualscreening at high res, or playing some games with friends.

 

Thanks for the answers. Now I'm trying to figure out how to go about purchasing this. I'm a student and believe I qualify for the student discount but I was wondering how the sale, the coupon code in this forum and the student discount affect price -- can they all be used at the same time? I tried using the T400 coupon when I logged in there student site but it said the coupon code was not valid?

 

Act now before the 13th when both the anniversary and coupon are dead. I don't think the coupon and student discount work together, i've tried and had the same problem, i still think the coupon is the better deal . ACT NOW, you have exactly a day.