bullion416, I think partitioning a drive is almost always a bad idea. I don't see any advantage to having your operating system on one partition and your programs on another. You end up wasting space on one partition while another partition needs more space.
I do see a possible advantage to having your operating system and programs on one partition with your data on another partition. This lets you reformat and reinstall the operating system and programs while keeping your data intact. On the other hand, if you have a way to backup your data(which you should always have) this isn't as much of an advantage. All things considered, I'd say have one partition.