Definitely buy an aftermarket SSD. Stay away from Crucial C300 for now as they seem to have problems with 2011 i5/i7 macbooks(may have been fixed in latest firm

Definitely buy an aftermarket SSD. Stay away from Crucial C300 for now as they seem to have problems with 2011 i5/i7 macbooks(may have been fixed in latest firmware, but was a problem up untill recently). 2011 macbook pro has a sata3 controller, so you might as well aim for a sata 3 SSD. Sandforce controllers are still tough to beat and if you can afforce Vertex 3, go for it. Another thing is that a fellow from Macrumor has hacked the TRIM support for osx, so its now enabled on non-apple drives as well: http://www.groths.org/?page_id=322 http://www.groths.org/?page_id=322