E420 SSD Install for Dummies

Greetings,

After 5 years or so my trust T61 gave up the ghost, a victim of the dreaded nVidia motherboard meltdown. Faced with the cost of a motherboard for an old laptop, I decided to give the E420 a try. I should have it in my hands in a couple of days.

I also picked up a Samsung 830 SATA 6Gb/s 128GB SSD. My plan is to use this as the main/boot drive and move the HDD to the optical slot once I get the newmodeUS caddy. I can't remember the last time I've even used a disc drive?

I've read pretty much every related and semi-related thread I could find on the subject, but I'm still a little lost; and computers simply aren't my area of expertise, so I'm looking for some help. Here are the steps I'm going to take, along with some questions:

-step one: check for firmware updates on the SSD while it's hooked up to another computer (this can't be done once it's the primary drive, right?)

-download Windows 7 from one of the many links floating around and copy to a zip drive (this is necessary because the recovery discs wouldn't be optimized for use with an SSD, right?)

-QUESTION: I need to copy some Lenovo drivers from my new laptop for the proprietary Lenovo tools, right? How to I go about copying/installing these?

-swap the hardware. This I can do. I'm way more comfortable with mechanical stuff...

-install fresh copy of W7. I guess when I turn on the computer after swapping the HD, it'll walk me through this, right? I've done one other clean install of W7 on a desktop, and I did manage that

-get back on the internet on a borrowed computer and ask for help after the above doesn't work

I keep reading things like Trim, BIOS and partitions and I get confused. But I'm determined to figure this out rather than just have someone do it for me, because I'm like that... So, does this seem like a reasonable list? Am I missing anything?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

JW