Upgrade strategy for 2008 Unibody: Comments wanted

Short-time lurker, first time poster. :-)
I have a 2008 unibody Macbook (2.4 GHz w/ 4 GB of RAM). It's not my primary computer, but it is my primary travel laptop. Currently it is running Snow Leopard and a Vista Bootcamp partition. I attempted Parallels, but was disappointed with the performance and memory utilization. I'm trying to put together
an upgrade strategy to get another 2-3 years of good practical work out of the machine, as it's in fairly good shape.
Usage for the machine is primarily in OS X while around the house, and a mix of 75% Windows / 25% OS X while traveling, due to the need to run some proprietary apps that are Windows-only. Most are processor and memory bound, rather than GPU bound, which is why I'm able to keep using this machine despite the relatively poor Nvidia GPU.
I've read a fair bit, and decided on getting a larger SSD (300 - 500 GB), probably the OWC 480 GB SandForce-based model, and upgrading to 8 GB of RAM. I'd also like to migrate the BootCamp install to Windows 7, because Vista really quite *****, and I'm on Win 7 everywhere else. However, I have a couple of questions I was hoping y'all could help me with / provide opinions and feedback.
1) Should I wait for the release of Mountain Lion, and do a clean install from a custom USB/DVD? Or should I do a clean reinstall of Snow Leopard, then upgrade to Mountain Lion through the App Store? I am primarily concerned about Boot Camp.
2) Recommendation on an SSD: My understanding is that this particular MB revision is SATA II, so the best I can hope for is 1.5 GB throughput because it will be split with the SuperDrive. I was looking at an OWC Mercury Electra 6G in 480 GB (though that may be overkill). I wanted enough space for a comfortable Windows and OS X install for bootcamp (and to re-try Parallels), and going with 240 GB seemed a bit...sparse.
3) Many of the modeling files I use are already pre-compressed to save space (it's not uncommon for a single simulation to use 4-5 GB grid files and produce 20-30 GB of "compressed" output. Should I stay away from SandForce, or just bite the bullet and pay the higher cost for the OWC Extreme drives?
4) I've read mixed reports about the ability for 2008 unibody Macbooks to address the full 8 GB of RAM, and instead only sees 6 GB. Is this true/false? They don't make 3 GB sticks, so I'm upgrading anyway, but it would be nice to know.  I'm okay with only seeing 6 GB, but I'm curious whether folks have observed serious stability issues with an upgrade to 8 GB?
5) Are there any issues WRT Windows 7 through BootCamp on a non-Apple SSD that I should be worried about? I figured I could use TRIM while in BootCamp, and not worry about it in OS X. It still seems to be a toss-up (who do you believe!) whether TRIM makes a difference on SandForce SSDs or not, yes?
6) Any stability issues with FileVault2 full-disk encryption on SSDs in Lion I should worry about? Planning on upgrading to Mountain Lion as soon as it is available.
Thanks for putting up with teh n00b questions.

Get a regular HDD for  your computer. It should be a notebook sized drive, SATA II-3.0 Gb/s, 7200 RPM. A Seagate XT500 Hybrid is a good trade-off of performance and price.

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