have a Lenovo g500s laptop, 1 terabyte HDD. just bought a "Kingston Digital 240GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3 2.5 (7mm height) with Adapter Solid State Drive SV300S37A/240G " SSD drive to use for Ubuntu. I really don't like win 8, and trying to figure out how to load Ubuntu (preferably 12.04 ) to the SSD is maximally frustrating. previously used Ubuntu 12.04 on a win7 laptop, it wasn't too hard to dual boot. then came uefi, and i'm lost.
I want to end up with Ubuntu running on my SSD, and my HDD as storage, with win8 on it, if I ever want to use it.
thanks.

I like to remove internal drive and then load on to drive like normal. It will then let you run from usb without issue to internal.

I'd also suggest a new distro.

how to do what you suggest? I"ve no idea how to load on the drive with it removed from the laptop? or do I remove the hard drive, and try to boot from USB? I liked 12.04 since it was optional to have left side tool bar. but if the 14.0 distro will work better on my core i5 intel laptop (8 gig of ram) I'm up for that.
thanks for the suggestions.