My son is after a new pc as well and his choice is to go back to win 7 but 64 bit, in most cases, a pc's only as good as the software being run on it, this one I am on now, wont update its flash player - even after removing it etc, so come winter, its getting everything put on a external and the win 7 reinstalled and updated.
HP's are good we run two 2006 units, a dc5750 and a dc5850, very few issues, still running vista and proprietry software (cad, office etc.) with spares in my loft, lol.
surprised to hear that SSD's are a problem, would have though that hdd's would have had more issues.