Should I get a solid state drive?

I was thinking of getting a SSD for my Acer 8930g laptop, since the current hard drive I've got in it is failing.

Here's the problem. I talked to a friend who talks like he knows his stuff, and he says that a lot of messing about has to be done to stop the OS from doing lots of I/O and wearing the drive out real quick.
However from what I've read after some Googling about SSD write endurance gives me the feeling that this is a non-issue with modern SSDs.

So, the question is:

Can anybody give me a rough estimate for how long an SSD would last, and what I should be buying?

I'm intending to keep my current laptop for 3 more years at least, and I'll be using it a great deal. I don't do much I/O heavy stuff - mainly just browsing the web or programming.

 

I can't tell you how long a Solid State Drive would last, but what I can tell you is, don't bother with it. It just helps with load times, unless you have a RAID controller in your Laptop, you won't use the Solid State Drive to it's full potential. So just get a 7200RPM Laptop Hard Drive if you want something faster than a normal 5400RPM Laptop Hard Drive. I'm able to boot up my Desktop in 19 seconds, private message me for the link to the video.

-LeetNeo.

 

My current drive is probably failing because I bumped my laptop about too much, hence me wanting a SSD instead of a regular drive - they're tougher physically. Thanks though, PM me that video if you like.