I didn't see this until today and I've already installed the SSD and installed Windows and most programs on it. To be honest, while the difference is present, it does not seem as large as the difference between going from 4 GB of RAM to 16 GB of RAM. This makes me wonder if I've done something wrong.

I have verified that the SSD is aligned correctly (some number somewhere is divisible by 4096 although at the moment I can't remember what that is and why it needs to be that way). I did not check AHCI in my BIOS before installing Windows 7 but I just now shut down and looked at it and it appears my computer is new enough that AHCI is the primary method. The BIOS has provisions for AHCI mode and compatibility mode and mine was set to AHCI mode.

I do remember after having installed quite a few drives and a few programs, I finally got the Lenovo System Update application to work and it did download some AHCI drivers. I wonder if I was supposed to download those before installing Windows, put them on a USB drive and then during the installation select "Load Drivers" so that it had AHCI from the get go?

There are a few things about this installation process that didn't go absolutely perfectly and I would not be terribly opposed to doing it over although if it's not going to make a big performance difference I probably won't as things are working pretty decent despite a few instances of not doing things in the order I wish I had done them.