guidance please - y580 SSD/ Win 8 upgrade

Greetings,
I purchased the y580 with a 500GB HD at 7200RPM and it ships with windows 7 (no SSD in it currently)

I would like to install a crucial SSD that I purchased and upgrade to windows 8 on that SSD.

I'm not sure about the process though and am looking for some guidance. I found the thread about "clean install of windows 8" on this site, but am unsure which steps I do not need to do (since I am ADDING a SSD, not exchanging one.) I'm not overly knowledgeable about hard drives, partitions, etc and don't know what would be involved in this upgrade. I can generally figure things out with guidance, but depending on your suggestions, I may take it a computer place and have it done for me. So my questions are,

1. How would I go about doing this upgrade? What major steps would I take? I have not yet purchased the $15 windows 8 upgrade... is this a digital download?

2. If I bring it to a computer shop, is there anything I should tell them about this laptop and the process? I was reading about the OneKey Recovery and that you shouldn't delete certain partitions and that it has "Rapid Drive." Will the average computer shop not mess this up? Or do I need to prepare some information for them ahead of time?

Thanks!

 

Would it be easiest to upgrade to win 8 on the hard drive, burn an image, and then install my SSD?