I'm with you. On the other hand, considering that I had just bought a top-of-the-line 17'' MBP 3 months ago, the frugal part of me was actually dreading the prospect of an MBA-like MBP sans optical drive, because that's pretty much my dream machine right now. Would have been pretty hard to resist doing the foolish thing and upgrade again after just 3 months. As it is, I look forward to upgrade next year, pretty sure that's gonna be the date then. Personally speaking, makes that much more financial sense now. ;-) Now I just need to decide whether to spring for an optibay in the meantime...

I understand that there are pretty HUGE technical differences between SSDs and traditional HDDs. But from a user perspective it's just a faster component that uses less power...