MacOS – Does cloning with SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner clone everything from a HDD to a SSD

So you can keep using your old 500GB HDD I would buy a cheap enclosure for it. They can be had with USB 2.0 for as little as $10.

Concerning the Software-Side, neither SuperDuper nor Carbon Copy Cloner are bad. Personally I, however, prefer Apple's own Disk Utility.

Simply boot from your Install DVD or Restore Partition (if you use Lion), holding down the ALT key while you power on your machine.

Both the Install DVD and the Restore Partition give you access to Disk Utility. There simply hit the Restore tab and drag and drop your Source an Destination volume accordingly.

If you do not want to buy a new HDD enclosure simply clone your internal HDD to your spare external using the aforementioned way. Then replace your Book's HDD with the SSD. And clone everything back to it.

1. Your Macbook can have as much as 3GB of RAM. Check it first.
2. Buy an Optical Disk Drive to HDD adaptor on ebay (9.5mm PATA to SATA variant). Put you HDD there.
3. Crucial is good. 64GB is enough for me, SATA150 and probably you. Small read/writes are same between different sizes and you will not get those faster linear RW anyway — why pay more when you can have platters to store those big files?
4. Still it's wiser to sell your Macbook as is and buy anything unibody(used) for a bit more — you'll get better graphics to help with flash (I have such a notebook and know how pathetically slow it becomes when flash is on). And then max that unibody Macbook with RAM (which is DDR3 and cheaper) and SSD.