I like the fact that even with a dvd drive it looks really thin. Looks like a premium laptop to (like you said), replace fairly a desktop computer.
Great laptop, great review.
At the moment I'm using 2 hard drives:
1x Samsung HD161HJ 160GB SATA (Old one)
1x Western Digital WD20EARX-00PASB0 2TB SATA Caviar Green (Recent)
I am using this configuration because I didn't had the money to spend on an SSD to boost up my system.