I just got a reply from Old turkey re an issue but cannot find how to reply as the answer was really on the money.

I have a Sony VAIO VGN-FW 590 that I need to change the hard drive in. Can this be accessed via the base of the machine...

Well I have been using the Samsung 830 and Crucial M4 for some time and no problem (not in a Mac though) I find they behave better if you set them up properly before installing too. - not absolutely necessary but good practice in my mind The easiest way to align an SSD is to create an aligned partition on the SSD with the help of Diskpart. Open an elevated command prompt and run the following sequence of commands – each line followed by Enter. Diskpart List disk Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your SSD in List disk) Clean Create partition primary align=1024 Format fs=ntfs quick Active (assuming you want to install an OS) Exit Note: If you want to create a 100MB partition with alignment, the create command is: Create partition primary size=100 align=1024 The size unit is always MB. Verification If you want to verify the alignment (e.g. for a SSD where you are not certain whether the proper alignment was done), you use the following commands. Diskpart List disk Select disk n List...

Hum a quick run of Speccy will tell you all you ned to know about the machine mate. http://www.piriform.com/speccy Oh meant to add in a nutshell no you can't mix RAMs either by choice or stick notch configuration

If you can't get it online mate try a call to Microsoft depends on what you put on ? new machine, upgrade, old machine new drive etc

All of my machines have SSD's now and well can't go past the Samsung 830 or Crucial M4 IMHO. Mind you thy need a bit of prepping first and I don't know about the appliances you are using but if it has a defrag component you should turn it off as the read write ability will decrease it's life. In a Windows based app then the 7 Windows will use TRIM to get rid of the rubbish and get it in optimal mode.