250GB Samsung 840 Series 2.5" SATA Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) w/ Notebook/Desktop Installation Kit (MZ-7TD250KW) $150 + Free Shipping

I recently (1 mo) installed one of these in my late-2009 Macbook Pro (very similar to yours) and it's been amazing. If you're still at the stock 2 or 4 GB RAM, go to the max of 8 GB while you've got the bottom of the laptop taken off. For ~$200 you'll be getting what feels like a new computer.

You'll also need a #00 Philips to unscrew the bottom of the laptop and a T6 Torx to move the hardrive screws from the old to the new. The screws are special and needed to properly hold the new SSD in place.

Have you had any compatibility issues? I read a couple reviews on Amazon of people saying it didn't work well in their MBP.

I put in 8 GB RAM a few years ago, which made a difference when I had multiple programs running at the same time (used to do some photo/video editing for a job I had back then), but if I'm not running those big programs very often anymore - where will the speed increase be noticeable? People always mention that it boots in no time (but I only turn my mbp off occasionally) and that it opens programs faster (but firefox already loads pretty quick and word is up and running fine in 30 seconds or so). Don't get me wrong - I'm not going to complain about faster speeds, just wondering if the price is worth it? Plus I'm wondering if prices on SSDs this size might be dropping sometime soon?

Unfortunately I don't have a clean copy of Win 7, only the one that came with the Dell laptop. I bought a few copies of Windows 8 for $14.99, but am hesitant to give it a run based on reviews.

Dam! I just bought this exact drive from microcenter 4 days ago for 170! Should i return it for this one. would it really be worth the trouble?!

we can also note the very low write speeds for the TLC-equipped Samsung 840.

The voltages we recorded with the Samsung 840 are higher than the Samsung 840 Pro across the board, and also exhibit one of the highest idle voltages that we have witnessed. This is probably due to some hefty background processes to handle the TLC NAND. The only area where the Samsung 840 performed admirably was in the Startup voltage, which came in at a very low 1.13W.

The random write voltage was unsurprisingly very high, and the sequential write voltage requirement is also on the high end. With this being a relatively new SSD, with its TLC destined to begin producing more errors over the life of the drive, we would expect these power consumption figures to grow over the life of the SSD. Even with these relatively 'fresh' readings we feel that this would not be the best SSD for mobile applications.

The low write speed offered with the Samsung 840 Series is going to be a concern for some users. It is especially important that users with moderate to heavy write workloads carefully weigh other options before making the jump to a TLC SSD. The low write speed will be an immediate problem in large file transfer situations, and endurance will be a long-term problem. It is also important to note that the 120GB model of this SSD only has a sequential write speed of 130MB/s and random read IOPS of 32,000, significantly lower than the lackluster write performance that we observed today in our testing.

Including a thermal pad for the controller would help to keep the device cool. We would like to see thermal pads with this SSD when we take the higher power consumption figures from TLC NAND into consideration.

Our steady state testing essentially places a workload upon the SSD until it is forced to begin running the internal management routines and garbage collection during actual usage. This is especially important with this type of NAND as it is definitely going to experience far more data errors than MLC over time. This will create increasing overhead for the MDX controller over the lifetime of the device. The read speed degradation that we observed is worrisome due to the fact that the increasing error rates can trigger these drive management routines, in effect creating read speed degradation in lower usage scenarios than with MLC NAND.

The extreme loss of write performance in steady state in our Iometer testing can also be a sign of long term performance issues in steady state as the NAND ages.

The following is the easiest way to proceed. but it depends on two things.
One, that you can shrink your 320 gig hard drive to around 230 gigs and that you have an external hard drive available for the image.
It goes like this.
Control Panel, Backup and restore, Make a system image.
After making the image, it will offer you to burn a repair/restore DVD, which you do.
Then you install your SSD, boot up from the DVD, direct it to installing the image you just made, sit back and watch the show.
The next time it boots, it'll be identical to your 320 HD, only a lot faster.

If you decide to do it this way and you don't happen to know how to shrink a HD, just say so and I'll post the instructions.

Installed windows 8 a week ago. I had more problem with this than windows 7 in 1 year. This OS is worst the VISTA!

1. didn't wake up from sleep the first that after fresh installed.
2. can't open my video, pictures, and music folder. I had to delete and recreate them.
3. Had problem installing dropbox.
4. Got the blue screen, and had to reboot.

So you learned to clean install? (usually fixes most of my upgrade from 7 to 8 woes)

Why would you even be surfing this deal if you're going to buy of enterprise use?