Laptops Upgrade my Mac!

egobrain.exe

egobrain.exe

Adept
Hello Guys,


Its like been a couple of years that i have had my MacBook Pro and it has been working flawlessly without giving me any hiccup whatsoever! But as days have gone by its been a bit slow than before but i am impressed with the fact that it has served me better than my previous Vaio and has totally made me addicted to itself. I think its time for an upgrade in terms of memory and storage. So i have thought in terms of storage i will be buying an External HD probably that of 1 or 2 TBs. But the question stands for me is what and how much should i increase my RAM? Have gone through the posts and also the internet, most of them say that they have done 2 x 4GB and it has been working good. My questions are :

1. Can i install a pair of 8GB sticks?
2. How do i know which and what kind of sticks are compatible with my Mac?
3. Approx. cost of both 4GB and 8GB RAM sticks?
4. Suggestions for the sticks that i can put in (Brand and Model #).

I bought my Mac in mid-2011 and is running on Mac OS X Lion (Version 10.7.5). And the current specs are : 2.3Ghz Intel Core i5 Processor, 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 , 320GB SATA DISK HD.

Help will be much appreciated, Thank you!

Regards,
egoB!
 
Put in a SSD. Another mechanical drive will not help your machine feel any quicker.

Take all the cash you would on the upgrade, sell your house and get the biggest SSD you can. SATAII is fine as the chipset doesn't have SATAIII support.

It will be a massive upgrade.Put your 320GB in a case and use it for secondary storage.

As to memory, try and get memory upgrade direct from Apple. Costs more, but very much worth it.

The biggest problem with that MBP is the hard drive, which is slower than a dog dying. I cursed it every day while I had it (office machine) given that all my other rigs had SSDs.
 
I have nothing against it except the fact that it's got a fully-locked down system and refused to cooperate with the rest of the network (all-windows environment with only three Macs is a recipe for disaster in an office). As a laptop it's a ton better than almost any Windows laptop. But I do know that a SSD is almost indispensable in any PC today. I bought an Asus laptop that spanks the Mac in terms of hardware specs, yet the Mac had a better screen, a more responsive touchpad and keyboard, a better battery, more powerful and stable wireless, and the overall experience was much smoother in spite of being half the hardware of the Asus. All in all, a better laptop.

However, that crappy little Asus has been transformed into a new beast after adding a new Centrino 6230 wireless and a OCZ Vertex4 SSD. You don't need the wireless as the Mac is already great, but you desperately need the SSD. You will not be disappointed.
 
Went through a few SSDs on eBay, pretty costly and cannot afford it at any case! I mean like i can probably afford a 120GB or a 160GB one but why should i do it when i have 320GB HD already?
 
If you cant understand that i'm afraid there isn't much hope of an "upgrade" for you. That word has a very specific meaning, and it's not the same as 'upsize'.

Good Luck with your Mac.
 
I would suggest picking up the cheapest you can find. IIRC the speeds are locked to 1066MHz so expensive memory will get you no benefits.

Good Luck.
 
How can buying an external hd for a laptop be an upgrade?

If you are serious about the upgrade then the biggest thing you gotta do is get a ssd pronto.
Then try to bump up the ram to 8 gigs. Like cranky said that the speeds are locked to 1066 then try to find the cheapest solution possible.
 
Do you use the optical drive? If not, dump it and replace it with an SSD, install the OS on the SSD and use the HDD for storage. Better than swapping out one storage device for another, IMO.
 
Get a ssd,and install ML(it is much better than Lion).If you are not running VM,4GB of RAM is good enough for now.Upgrading the RAM will not make it any faster on normal load,but ssd will make it fly.
The weakest link in a MBP is the sluggish archaic hdd.Get rid of it asap.
 
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