Hardware upgrade opinions requested

Hello MacForum community,
I have a couple of questions I would like input on from some "seasoned" pros. I am looking to upgrade my early 2011 mbp 13" to a dual hd setup with an ssd as the boot/app drive and the current internal drive in place of the optical drive. I also am looking to upgrade ram from 4-8gb. For the ram, I am fairly set on going with the crucial upgrade. Any opinions/suggestions? As far as the dual drive scenario, I have been looking at 4 different brands. Samsung, Intel, Crucial, and Kingston. I want no more than 128gb since I currently have 80 gb of apps and plan to reduce that to 70-75gb and the price of a 256 is out of my range. My greatest concern is reliability/longevity with the ssds. Since I don't plan to do a whole lot of writing to the drive, I feel that I can keep it going for a bit, but would like some opinions about who has had the best luck with which brands.
One last question…. I am going to Nepal for a year+, and will have limited access to physical tech support, so reliability is key. One plan I have is to keep a external hard drive as a backup boot disk just in case the sad fails while I am away. I will also keep a time machine backup for files. Is this the most reliable way of insuring a redundant system where I can still work if any of the drives crap out on me? I have apple care on the mbp, and would be interested in any other companies that provide international warranty support for 1+ years if possible.
I don't know if my usage would help with opinions/advice, so here goes…. My primary usage is: final cut, compressor, motion, cs3 (after effects/illustrator), aperture, web dev, web browsing/word proccessing, etc.
I would appreciate any and all input on the above topics, and please ask any questions of me if it could help in your advice.

Thanks

jimbrohustle,
Here is what I can suggest, Ram needs to be upgraded,
Here is my observation of SSD, Samsung is little more expensive than Crucial, Intel is a good brand, I do not know about Kingston.
I have been running Samsung for nearly a year 830 series, it is reliable and fast.
Intel is on another mbp runs good, lately I have Crucial not bad, yet there seems to be issues with firmwear 010G latest, I have 000F firmware, still running and no problem.
Whatever you decide SSD should be good for years, sine you will be backing up on Time machine on 1 drive and another bootable drive with CCC or super duper should be fine.
Should SSD fail, you can still survive on the bootable drive. And apple care should tide you over.