worth upgrading 2010 macbook pro

Anything outside of the options Apple lists as a BTO configuration at time of purchase are of questionable value when it's time to sell. Some buyers are willing to pay a bit more for the upgrades, and others aren't.

Generally I upgrade mine immediately so I may enjoy the performance increases. I have no desire to upgrade later in the hopes of getting more for it upon resale.

For example on my 15" mid 2010 BTO MBP, I replaced the hard drive within a week after purchasing it, with a Samsung SSD. A great improvement that I've enjoyed.

That's my take on it anyway

Acorn said:

Would a SSD upgrade be a waste of money with only 3g SATA? should i sell it off and cut my losses?

Click to expand...

Not at all. Even a 3G SATA II SSD will be significantly faster than a HDD. The 2010 and 2011 MBA had 3G SATA II SSDs. You can just buy on price and reliability, since anything on the market will deliver similar performance for you.

I agree that it's better to upgrade for yourself than for resale value. You won't get back what you paid. Remember, the next owner can upgrade later just as easily as you can now. The single best upgrade you can make is to put an SSD in there. It would deliver more than going from 8GB to 16GB.

2010 MBP is not very old yet so upgrade to SSD.

The SSD will make a tremendous difference in terms of performance (just to compound on what everyone else said). An SSD is probably the biggest performance upgrade you can 'feel' in every day tasks. After putting one in, I will NEVER go back to a spinning disk in a computer (as a main drive anyway) if there is ANY way I can avoid it!

Also, make sure to shop around, don't just stick with OWC. Their prices tend to be high because they sucker people into thinking only their stuff is Mac compatible.

And, like the others said, even a 3gbps connection to an SSD will be MUCH faster than a spinning notebook drive. It's more than just raw throughput speeds (which usually only matter for very large file transfers ANYWAY), it's alot about access times. Your computer spends more time churning through a bunch of small files than pulling down single large files. That's where an SSD truly shines. But even if solid file transfers, it'll outrun ANY Sata 3 notebook drive.

There are even PATA SSD's that kill in performance. (Don't be fooled by the bit-vs-byte. For some reason the jump to SATA also resulted in switching to being marketed in bits per second instead of bytes. The latest PATA revision was 167MB/s, or roughly 1.3Gb/s, marginally slower than SATA I 1.5Gbps)

Acorn said:

ok thanks for the advice guys. maybe i can get lucky and catch a samsung 830 on sale somewhere. i can always move it to something else i guess later if need be.

Click to expand...

Why restrict yourself to just the 830? The 840 looks to be a great drive, and the Crucial M4 has a proven track record.

T5BRICK said:

Why restrict yourself to just the 830? The 840 looks to be a great drive, and the Crucial M4 has a proven track record.

Click to expand...

+1 to the M4. Don't get too hung up on synthetic numbers. The M4 is a lot cheaper, in the real world it'll perform just the same, AND! It has a solid, proven record of reliability and UNLIKE the Samsung drive, the firmware can be updated within Mac OS! (Samsung drives only support updating within Windows).

One more vote for the m4. The ability to update the drive's firmware in OS X is a really nice option to have, and real world performance is better than what is suggested by the synthetic benchmarks out there.

duervo said:

One more vote for the m4. The ability to update the drive's firmware in OS X is a really nice option to have, and real world performance is better than what is suggested by the synthetic benchmarks out there.

Click to expand...

This +1000000

People get SO hung up on benchmarks that really don't matter. Read speeds are nice for bragging rights, but your computer spends far more time accessing and moving small files that tugging large ones around. Access times and the like matter a lot more. Also, in the grand scheme of things, often what some interpret as major differences are actually going to result in minute-if-measurable-at-all real-world differences in actual applications. That, to ME, isn't worth an addition $50 or $100 or going with a drive with a less established track record.

For others, sure, more power to them. I've got nothing against going for the bleeding edge! But, I think people should realize a black magic app speed test is not the definitive answer when it comes to performance!