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Hey, this is my first post. But hear me out.

N

Neil1138

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 21, 2008
165
0
I have trolled these forums for quite a while and I am a student and I think its about time I make the jump to Apple. I saw the MacBooks at Best Buy and I was very impressed with the aluminum unibody and by just playing with it in the store, I feel that I can adapt to OS X very quickly.

I want to major in Engineering and I plan to use Boot Camp to install Vista on a partition for things such as AutoCad and stuff. Heres my plan, lemme know if it sounds good:

I am going to buy the $1999 MacBook Pro at the apple store. I want to know if I can upgrade the RAM to 4GB in the store? And will AutoCad be able to run decently?? Is there any chance I could even use parallels? I would need 4GB for intensive apps like AutoCad right?

Thanks, and I'm prolly going to be a regular on these forums from now.

First a proud iPhone owner then the switch to 3G then the jump to Mac. Thanks guys
 
swiftaw said:
Do not buy your extra RAM from Apple. Buy it from a third party and install it yourself, you'll save lots of money.
Click to expand...

That is not really the case anymore. The reason to not upgrade through Apple is it is a BTo and no returns and they make you wait. The price of RAM through Apple isn't high anymore.
 
oh my bad. I thought you could upgrade RAM in the store. If i do order it online, what kind of protection do I need for the internals of notebooks... like static protection.

And one more question. How fast do MacBook Pros run. Like, on my windows laptop, it uses a lot of RAM just for surfing the internet. Its a great computer, but SP3 made it slow. Does Mac have optimized performance with 2GB of RAM, especially the MacBook Pro?
 
swiftaw said:
Do not buy your extra RAM from Apple. Buy it from a third party and install it yourself, you'll save lots of money.
Click to expand...

Actually, the ram is about what you'd pay for a third party to ship it to you. The difference is your machine then becomes a BTO and exchanging it is more difficult.
 
jessica. said:
Actually, the ram is about what you'd pay for a third party to ship it to you. The difference is your machine then becomes a BTO and exchanging it is more difficult.
Click to expand...

Yeah this "get your RAM 3rd party" thing isn't so important now with Apple charging just about the same amount as other companies for DDR3 RAM
 
Neil1138 said:
oh my bad. I thought you could upgrade RAM in the store. If i do order it online, what kind of protection do I need for the internals of notebooks... like static protection.
Click to expand...

Static problems are really of no issue. Installing more RAM is very easy and the MBP is very fast. Using Parallels requires as much RAM as you can spare, so going with 4Gb is a good idea, but not necessarily needed right at purchase.

Overall OS X has good memory management.
 
The way I see it is... If I'm going to drop $2000 on a laptop, the difference between a $50 RAM upgrade and a $150 RAM upgrade doesnt matter to me.
 
Neil1138 said:
The way I see it is... If I'm going to drop $2000 on a laptop, the difference between a $50 RAM upgrade and a $150 RAM upgrade doesnt matter to me.
Click to expand...

That $100 could buy you an external drive to run Time Machine on or a whole bunch of useful small apps. Buy your own RAM, put it in yourself, it's the easiest thing in the world.
 
You can but you don't want to... been there, done that...

Neil1138 said:
oh my bad. I thought you could upgrade RAM in the store. If i do order it online, what kind of protection do I need for the internals of notebooks... like static protection.

And one more question. How fast do MacBook Pros run. Like, on my windows laptop, it uses a lot of RAM just for surfing the internet. Its a great computer, but SP3 made it slow. Does Mac have optimized performance with 2GB of RAM, especially the MacBook Pro?
Click to expand...

They will add ram at an Apple store but then you essentially pay for ram you won't use. they will add the ram and send you home with the ram they remove. You pay for the computer + ram. If you configure a laptop on the apple site you only pay for the Ram you will use. The stock laptops in the the store are built with 2 1GB sticks that have to come out and be replaced with 2 2GBs. To save the most money, buy ram 3rd party and put it in yourself.

Me, I need immediate gratification so I ordered mine with the max 4 Gb ram.
 
Doing a quick google search the cheapest 4GB DDR3 kits I found were about $100 compared to $150 for the upgrade from Apple, so you're not saving that much but then again if you do it yourself and the 4GBs mess up for some reason you do still have the 2GBs that you can put back into it. But if you get it from Apple it's covered under the same warranty as your MBP rather than having one company for the notebook warranty and another company for the RAM warranty and then you don't have to worry about installing it yourself. But do what feels best to you, if you want to pay $50 extra to have Apple install it and not having to worry about 2 warranties then go for it, if you want to save $50 and install it yourself, keep your old RAM, and are good at keeping track of your own paper work then do that.
 
I just called my local Apple Store and they told me that I could upgrade my RAM in the store. They said they buy back the unused RAM and the turn-around time for the install is 2-4 hours. It would be $150 total to upgrade to 4GB of RAM.

Maybe I'm crazy but that seems like a decent price b/c all the places I can find sell 4GB of DDR3 RAM for about $130... And if I do it legitimately from the Apple store, I dont have to go through the headache of the warranty stuff with aftermarket RAM. I dunno but the $20 premium is a no-brainer
 
Just do it in store, I did.

Yes, it would technically be cheaper if you just did 3rd party, but who the hell is going to buy 2x1GB ddr3 RAM from you? Most anything that will come with ddr3 RAM will have at least 2GB. Essentially, you are just left with extra memory that you don't need, so you might as well just have it done right there for you.
 
Neil1138 said:
I have trolled these forums for quite a while and I am a student and I think its about time I make the jump to Apple. I saw the MacBooks at Best Buy and I was very impressed with the aluminum unibody and by just playing with it in the store, I feel that I can adapt to OS X very quickly.

I want to major in Engineering and I plan to use Boot Camp to install Vista on a partition for things such as AutoCad and stuff. Heres my plan, lemme know if it sounds good:

I am going to buy the $1999 MacBook Pro at the apple store. I want to know if I can upgrade the RAM to 4GB in the store? And will AutoCad be able to run decently?? Is there any chance I could even use parallels? I would need 4GB for intensive apps like AutoCad right?

Thanks, and I'm prolly going to be a regular on these forums from now.

First a proud iPhone owner then the switch to 3G then the jump to Mac. Thanks guys
Click to expand...

if you're in college..make sure you get the educational discount.
 
Neil1138 said:
I just called my local Apple Store and they told me that I could upgrade my RAM in the store. They said they buy back the unused RAM and the turn-around time for the install is 2-4 hours. It would be $150 total to upgrade to 4GB of RAM.
Click to expand...
Wow, they do buyback? That's awesome. I thought the $150 would be BTO only. Might have to visit the Apple Store.

If you do it yourself, though, invest in a $5 anti-static wrist strap at your local Radio Shack. We use similar things at work. Why risk it?
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103245
 
So if I upgrade my RAM in the store at the time of purchase, is my macbook considered BTO??
 
MacLadybug said:
They will add ram at an Apple store but then you essentially pay for ram you won't use.
Click to expand...

That's not true. If you go online and configure the laptop Apple adds $150 to the base price. Then you are paying for the base model computer, which would normally have 2GB of RAM, PLUS $150 to upgrade to 4GB of ram. So there you are paying for RAM you don't even have. Whereas, if you buy the RAM from somewhere like newegg, you are still paying for the base model computer plus another $150 for the 4GB of RAM, BUT you actually have everything you paid for. Then you can use the 2GB for a rainy day (i.e. something happens to your purchased RAM) or you can try and sell it.

Neil1138 said:
So if I upgrade my RAM in the store at the time of purchase, is my macbook considered BTO??
Click to expand...

I could be mistaken, but I don't believe you can actually buy RAM from Apple in the store like that. What you can do is buy RAM from someplace else and bring it into the Apple store and they will replace it for you. If you want the computer to come with 4GB of RAM you are going to have to order it online.
 
the 2.53 comes with 4 Gb RAM as standard so that wouldn't be considered BTO , it has more level 2 cache at 6Mb as well and the 512 graphics over the 256 , costs a fair bit more than just getting RAM but does remove bottlenecks the 2.53 should be the base MBP and coat the same as the 2.4 does ....
 
yeaaah. I could hardly justify going from my first notion of the high end MacBook to the base MacBook Pro. I could never drop $2500 on a laptop... thanks for the suggestion tho
 
abiyng87 said:
I could be mistaken, but I don't believe you can actually buy RAM from Apple in the store like that. What you can do is buy RAM from someplace else and bring it into the Apple store and they will replace it for you.
Click to expand...

I don't know where you live, but here in The Galaxy, the Apple store sells RAM and installs it for you.
 
Neil1138 said:
I am going to buy the $1999 MacBook Pro at the apple store. I want to know if I can upgrade the RAM to 4GB in the store? And will AutoCad be able to run decently?? Is there any chance I could even use parallels? I would need 4GB for intensive apps like AutoCad right?
Click to expand...

From one engineer to an engineering student, welcome to the world of Mac :) Be prepared to get a lot of grief from your classmates who insist that "Macs are only good for graphics and design and not for technical or engineering work."

But to your question: once you install Windows on the Mac, that OS just sees a computer with a fast C2D processor, (X) Gb of RAM, etc. - it doesn't really know or care that it's a Mac. So yes, it will run AutoCAD just fine.

I use VMWare Fusion, so I can't address your question about Parallels.

Regarding RAM - on PC's, I've run AutoCAD with 2 Gb and 4 Gb and I can distinctly notice a difference. When I got my iMac, I asked the store if I could upgrade the RAM and hard disk, and I was told they would upgrade the RAM in the store but not the HD - so I ordered from the Apple Store online. I do NOT know if this applies to a MBP, just an iMac.

For months I've defended my decision to buy Apple RAM - it was only marginally more expensive, plus (1) it's covered under the same warranty/Applecare as the iMac itself, (2) I was ordering online anyway to get the bigger HD, (3) No additional shipping charges from ordering RAM from another vendor, and (4) I didn't have to muck around with doing it myself - I just unboxed and went!

Good luck with your purchase!
 
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