Is this a worthwhile upgrade for a Macbook Pro circa 2008? Its a good laptop, don't really want to sell it, but would like to do an upgrade or two if it helps me get another year or two out of it.

I was in the same situation - my Portege R600 is a one kilogram powerhouse with a slow dual-core CPU and a transflective screen that lets me work in sunlight (beach, park), exploiting its 7 hour battery life. It's irreplaceable.

I added an SSD like this one - about 500 MB/sec read/write - and maxed out memory at 5GB. I then did a clean install of everything. It's like a new machine, and boots faster than my quad-core desktop!

Not this one. You can't take full advantage of its SATA3 speed with your laptop. However, I think an SSD would definately be a worthwhile upgrade. Keep an eye out for some of the faster SATA II drives. Like the OCZ Vertex 2 or even Agility 2. I've seen of few of them on here for $1 a gig or even slightly less. I have 8 SSDs now. The older Kingston's are ok, but the OCZs are faster. These new HyperX drives are awesome though.

Or, if you plan to eventually replace the laptop with a new one, you could get a drive like this, then just re-use it in the new one.

I have a Macbook 13" Aluminum from that year that supports SATA II and I upgraded to a Crucial C300 SSD. Opening applications and loading did speed up. Surprisingly, my battery life increased from 3hrs to 3.5hrs (varies, some SSD have higher energy consumption). I also did a fresh install of the OS, deleted a lot of softwares that I don't use, and moved files to an external drive, so that might have helped with the performance too. If it's your first time using an SSD, I'd say go for it (though not specifically this SSD, I'm not a fan of sandforce controllers). SATA III is fine even if your laptop doesnt support it since you can transfer it once you upgrade your laptop.

Thanks for the replies, gents!

Agree with doit. Get a Sata II drive. It's cheaper too. definitely recommend Vertex 2