Running bitcoin feels like its indexing my harddisk. [...] I don't mind the CPU usuage, but its seek behaviour is ridiculous.
Sounds like the problem I noticed, only with spinny disk instead of Compact Flash (cheapskate SSD drive).
https://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=274.msg23624#msg23624 (a sticky topic)
Did performance improve once you finished fetching the block chain?
Yes, afterwards it was ok.
I suppose it depends on where you live, but in an area where power supply is stable, I think keeping everything in memory and writing it in one go would be best. It's not like it's the end of the world when your machine crashes. Your wallet should be on non-volatile memory of course.
I still have the problem of building the application, which is also bad for adoption; many people don't like it when they are running black boxes. Can someone look here?
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1898.0