This is exactly what I did 2-3 years ago with my old laptop... At that time I've had a 4-5 years laptop and I simply bought a HDD Caddy and an SSD. I've installed the original 750Mb HDD into the caddy and placed the SSD where the HDD was.

Before doing this, the startup time in Windows was around 2 - 2.5 minutes. I also upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 8GB and I used the SSD for the operating system and that's where I installed my most frequently used programs.

As a result, the Windows startup time dropped down to 10-15 seconds and also the programs I was using from the SSD also had a much improved startup time.

I still use that laptop, and only now I'm thinking about upgrading to a new laptop (because of Windows 10 driver problems).

As a conclusion, this is a great way to upgrade your old laptop. Instead of spending $1000 - $ 1500 on a brand new laptop, you just buy a caddy, an SSD and some RAM (if needed of course) and in most cases it will run faster than a new laptop :)

Oh, and I think I used my DVD 2-3 times in those 6-7 years - so just toss it to the trash, and replace it with a HDD caddy :)