There is something I don't quite understand. I know a SSD helps with OS load times, but I'm not sure if all this boost is only noticeable/interesting when booting, or gives an all around considerably better experience thereafter.

I am interested in having a quick and responsive environment after booting, which leads me to think that it'd be better to spend the SSD capacity in my most used apps (and the page file? Another inside question) and not the OS itself. This, of course, means that I don't know just how much the OS reads/writes its files during normal usage.

So, how good an idea is it to dump the whole 20GB+ of Windows 7 OS into the SSD (considering the hefty price per GB of SSD capacity) if I can put up with the usual hard disk boot times? Would I be missing on a lot if I didn't?