I've heard that running on the power adapter can cause a macbook to run slower, I've seen a post just can't remember where I saw it.
According to
maflynn the newer systems with batteries that are not user-replaceable will experience performance issues if the battery is removed. It's the first time I've heard of it, but I don't have any evidence to say it's untrue, either. All that I can say is that there was no performance decrease on the systems I mentioned, and I regularly used them for photo editing and video encoding, so any performance cuts would have been noticable.
I was going to cannibalize my other laptop that has 4GB of ram, that uses DDR2 but it uses DDR2- 800 PC2-6400 memory, which to my understanding won't work for me, Oh well...
It wouldn't hurt to try, I suppose. I don't remember how the older systems handled it, but I've heard some claims that people use faster RAM and the system just under-clocks it. Changing the RAM on the MacBooks is pretty easy, too. At worst, you spend a few minutes and find that the system won't boot up. At best, you get 4 GB of RAM and it didn't cost you a thing.
2GB x 2 kits typically are running around $50-$60, I have been looking around and haven't found anything cheaper than that, if you know anywhere cheaper let me know.
That seems to be the going price. It used to be cheaper, but RAM prices always shoot up once a newer specification becomes dominant.
The hard drive I want will be a hybrid drive, since I need the space but want an increase in computer speed. I prefer to run my programs off of the internal drive, external drive speeds might actually be slower but I'm unsure about that.
I used a hybrid drive for a bit over a year and can attest to their speed. I use a SSD now, but as far as I'm concerned the SSD/HDD hybrids are the best value for capacity and speed. I actually didn't feel that my SSD upgrade represented a huge speed boost over my old Momentus XT.
The Aperture library isn't Aperture itself, but where your photos reside (assuming you choose to store your photos in the library, instead of linking out). Unless you're running an external drive connected via Thunderbolt then the speeds will most certainly be worse (unless there's a big disparity between drive access times, such as an internal 5400 RPM drive vs. an external 7200 RPM drive). I run my library off of an external, but that's because it's huge. It's fast enough for me as it is, and as a result I can't justify the extra cost associated with boosting the size of my internal drive to accommodate it. Go with whichever setup fits your needs and budget.