First time Mac Purchaser looking for answers

[wickedawesome]

Ok, I am ready to take the plunge. I am not a current Mac user. I have been on this site for a while and read some of the threads. I want to purchase the Mid range MacBook and upgrade to at least 2 mb of memory. But I see on here where several of you recommend adding your own. I was going to buy from Apple.com and upgrade. What are your suggestions for where to buy laptop and memory?

 

[bigbadnewill]

you from uk, usa or other? It makes quite a difference and welcome to the world of mac's...hopefully you'll enjoy it

 

[tersono]

Go ahead and buy the MB from Apple, but their RAM prices are ridiculous, so try someone like Crucial to buy your extra RAM.

 

[djejrejk]

Purchase your macbook from Apple and your Ram from macsales.com. You can add the memory yourself in less than 10 minutes and save $$.

 

[stvfisher]

Add the RAM yourself! There's a DIY doc on apples site that explains how to do it. You can add 4G buying from crucial, owc, newegg, etc for the same price (if not less) than what apple charges to upgrade to 2G.

 

[Icewind]

Yeah, buy the ram from Crucial. It's way cheap now. I done it last year for my C2D Macbook and it seriously takes like 5 minutes to install. Even my 80 year old Mum could install it. You'll save yourself loads of cash that you can use to buy other nice goodies for your shiny new Macbook

 

[wickedawesome]

Thanks for the good info. Checked with crucial and can get 4 Gb for $129, upgrade on Apple web site is $150 for 2mb.

 

[wickedawesome]

I am a total newbie to this. I have checked some of the other web sites and found the 4 GB of memory at a price of 60 to 180 dollars. Should I worry about what brand I buy?

 

[skyrider007]

Thanks for the good info. Checked with crucial and can get 4 mb for $129, upgrade on Apple web site is $150 for 2mb.

You mean GB Your Mac will run like a snail (or not run at all) with 4MB of RAM.

Hope you'll enjoy yours tho! I just ordered 4GB from Crucial as well, expecting to receive it this Tuesday.

 

[soupyjnr]

Im new too! Just ordered my MacBook!

 

[wickedawesome]

You mean GB Your Mac will run like a snail (or not run at all) with 4MB of RAM.

Hope you'll enjoy yours tho! I just ordered 4GB from Crucial as well, expecting to receive it this Tuesday.

Yeah 4 GB sorry about that.

 

[Melrose]

Go ahead and buy the MB from Apple, but their RAM prices are ridiculous, so try someone like Crucial to buy your extra RAM.

Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal recommends you save the money you'd spend for a faster processor and put it on more RAM, which as noted above is absurdly priced on the Apple store... save a couple/few hundred on .5 Ghz processor speed and spend one or two hundred on more RAM? Sound like a bargain to me I think.

Most of time, the RAM is what's going to speed things up anyway: a 2.33ghz processor is not going have any trouble running mail and safari and quicktime anyway, and the speed difference between that and a 2.4 won't be noticeable at all for running the smaller apps.