I’ve had my (new to me) Macbook Pro 2011 for almost 3 months now, and it is running great. I’ve upgraded the RAM to 16GB, and installed a new 250GB SSD Hard Drive. This laptop is now fast & light, and it has lowered the temps on the CPU. I attribute that to good fan control and less heat from the SSD Hard Drive.
I even bought a hard drive bay that uses the optical drive bay for an additional hard drive. I’ll be shopping for a 1TB 7200 rpm 2.5″ hard drive soon.