8GB ram or 128GB SSD upgrade?

[jedijoe]

ditto on getting your 8GB ram upgrade from 3rd party, OWC.com or newegg, whichever is cheaper. And go with the Intel 160GB G2. If you are not doing anything specifically that would use the extra 4GB of mem, the SSD will show night-and-day difference in some areas, like opening applications for the first time, boot up and shutdown, etc.

 

[nick9191]

Hello all

13" MBP (4GB ram, 2.53 processor model)

Question: I've been considering one of two upgrade options for my current Macbook Pro either 8GB ram or 128GB SSD upgrade.

I currently use my MBP for general web browser, word processing, e-mail and run Vmware Fusion. I use fusion mainly for work by running two machines not always at the same time. those machines are usually Windows XP and or Windows Server 2003. They're either used for development, testing ,etc.

I don't keep much personal or work data on the MBP. Mainly music to sync with iPhone and iPhoto otherwise that's it. I don't do any web development or use Garage band or use iDvd, etc.

My question is: What would be the better of the two upgrades?

Definitely the SSD.

People confuse more RAM with more speed. Obviously if you lack enough RAM to handle the applications you desire to run, you're computer will slow down, but the purpose of increasing RAM is the availability to do more- multi tasking etc.

Same with 64 bit vs. 32 bit. I can take an 8 bit application from the 80's that runs equally as fast as a 64 bit application of today. The obvious benefit of the 64 bit application is that I can do more with it, because amongst a billion other technical advances since 1983, it can address more memory.

With the apps you're running 4gb is fine, you will see a negligible speed difference, if any difference at all with 8gb. And you certainly don't need to address gigs of memory to each virtual machine, since as someone mentioned you would be totally bottlenecked by the processor anyway.

 

[dudulang]

SSD will boost definitively a lot the performance.

 

[karupspc]

Thank you!

Thank you everyone for your input. Truly appreciated.

No decisions yet!

 

[scottlinux]

I'm using 8GB of ram in OS X 10.6.2.

For running virtualbox, etc. more ram is amazing. You can dedicate 1, 2, heck even 3-4 GB to a single VM if needed. And then OS X still has 4 itself!

It's like having two computers at the same time, in one.

So if you do heavy daily VM stuff, more ram is gold.

 

[BeachChair]

So if you do heavy daily VM stuff, more ram is gold.

But so is a SSD