Bootstrap.dat gets it to about 20-ish GB of 40-something GB, so it does not get you out of a couple of days of heavy -reindex processing
I've recently been testing a variety of smaller and older PC's with bitcoin-qt client wallet and full blockchain on linux.

Pro:
You have your own copy of the whole blockchain since 2009
You can add things such as your own electrum pruned blockchain server so that you know whose node your fast wallet get its data from (and so that you can hide it up a branchline in your extensive LAN where most criminals wouldn't find it)
By choosing what sort of node it is you put in a 'vote' on the xt block size question

Con:
It needs > 50GB of HDD (Dec 2015) and will need even more next year
The overheads of running your pc 24h might be 1kWh per day electricity plus minor increased wear and tear on moving parts and storage devices.


Here is a list of (mostly failed) combinations:
bitcoin-qt 0.9.6
512MB single core 1.6GHz AMD - forget it
1024MB quad core 1GHz raspberry pi - forget it.  burned out a 64GB usb stick with too many rw before it had reindexed the blockchain
2048MB duel core 1.9GHz Dell - OK
6.2GB quad core 3.1 GHz Intel - OK, except that 0.9.6 is now obselete

bitcoin-qt 0.11.0
6.2GB quad core 3.1 GHz Intel - presently reindexing the blockchain (since 25th November)

If you don't want to know where Electrum gets its blockchain info from, then it might suit you better than running a full node.