Was looking to swap out the slower HDD with a SSD on my newest ASUS laptop that I use for gaming and ended up buying the Crucial M500 240GB SSD for $130. Almost bought a Kingston 240GB SSD for $5 cheaper until I did some research and it had some BAD warning signs!!!

Here is the Crucial M500 240GB SSD drive I got for $130: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148694

Here is the Kingston SSDnow V300 240GB SSD drive that I almost bought for $125 until the reviews scared me off: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721108

Here are the warning signs I saw at the Kingston SSD Drive that were INDICATORS that it might be a bad choice:

( 4 of 5 egg/star review )
Got 5.05 Good Version and NOT a 5.06 BAD Version
Performs as advertised
Running 5.05 FIRMWARE, not the 506/521 version
Quiet, cool like a ssd should

( 2 of 5 egg/star review )
NAND switch confirmed - SHADY

***The reviews at Newegg for this device are mixed between 120GB and 240GB reviews so the 4 of 5 egg rating was skewed, so this drive may not be 4 of 5 but much worse, but covered up by the 120GB drive reviews.

The biggest concern was looking into this 5.05 and 5.06 firmware ISSUE, which it appears that its not just a firmware difference but that Kingston also decided to cut costs of manufacturing by deciding through part of the products manufacturing cycle to also replace the better flash with lower quality flash and so if you have a 5.05 firmware drive you knew you had the better flash, but if you had the newer 5.06 version, you are almost certain that you have the lower quality and high failure rate flash chips contained in this SSD.

Cant wait for this Crucial M500 240GB SSD to be delivered. Going to end up voiding my warranty on my laptop was confirmed with ASUS. The HDD is burried in it and so its going to require quite a lot of dismantling to install. Prior to installation I am going to test this SSD with a SATA 2.5/3.5" USB HDD/SSD dock that I have. This way I know that the drive was tested good going into this laptop. Really not sure why so many laptops these days are being built without panels to gain easy access to HDD's to swap them out. More and more are becoming dismantle projects to upgrade or replace drives and unfortunately I am going to be destroying my warranty as a result of this SSD upgrade which otherwise would not be void if there was a HDD door/panel to remove and gain safer access to the drive.

Here is some more info on the M500 drive SERIES: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-m500-1tb-ssd,3551.html

*** This drive is not the fastest out there, but at this price tag to me it seemed like the best cost to quality and storage capacity I could locate that I also trusted the brand name and of which the reviews were promising that the SSD PURCHASED should be a good solid device.