accolyte1

I currently use a good ole' Anted Notebookcooler, however, I plan on purchasing CoolerMaster Notepal U1 when I dump my desktop and start using my M11Xr3 as my main machine.

I've owned every revision of the M11x. I currently have an M11x R3 with an i5 processor, 8gb of ram, and a 256gb OCZ Agility 4. This thing is great! My only complaint is the screen. Not only does it have washed out colors but the resolution is not so great for multitasking. I wish it were at least 900p. The laptop is pretty great, it's a shame Alienware discontinued them. I'm tempted by Dell's XPS 13 line now that it has a 1080p display but at $1400 I think I'll hold out to see if Alienware makes a 13 inch laptop.

I have very seriously been considering an upgrade to a samsung 840 pro 256gb ssd. Did the upgrade to the ssd improve performance noticeably? How about battery life?

I have been successful in getting optimus working using bumblebee, however, even when using the power management options to turn off the discrete gpu, my battery life drops from around 7 hours in windows (with conservative battery settings and a dim screen) to about 4 hours.