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

[Neil1138]

much appreciated Tomorrow

 

[m1stake]

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

Antistatic wraps are more of a myth than anything else. You've got to be pretty careless to actually zap it, just make sure you discharge any static on you by touching something grounded. Like your case or the sink.

Also, their "buy back" is a rip off. They require you to give them the memory when they do it, you don't save anything. It's their way of making money on the 4GB, then putting the 2GB into another system at the factory and making money again. They're not doing you any favors with the "buy back."

 

[Ampidire]

Nobody mentioned he's a student so he can get student discount pricing on MacBook Pro's? Where the base model is $1799 and the 2.53 is $2299...

Do that.

If you want to save even more money, purchase a 1-year Apple ADC Student Developer membership ($99), and use your 1-time hardware purchase where you can get MBP's for 1599 base or 1999 2.53 model. So that's 1698 or 2198 for the 15.4" MBP's.

 

[Neil1138]

yeah I am not in college yet. So I have no valid student ID other than my high school ID which is worth nothing.

 

[mattyb240]

Auto Cad will run great,

I had it on my old pc tower 1.8 single core 2gb ram an that was fine.. Only when you are doing large files will you notice with lots of texture. An my 2.5 MBP does it amazingly well...

 

[swordth]

I have trolled these forums for quite a while

How do you a troll a forum if its your first time posting?

 

[Pando]

How do you a troll a forum if its your first time posting?

Maybe he meant he's been lurking.

 

[anirban]

FWIW, I have a Classic MBP (SR), with 2GB of RAM. I run Windows XP off boot camp, and AutoCAD runs beautifully- and so does MATLAB.

 

[Neil1138]

Maybe he meant he's been lurking.

my bad, i meant lurking

 

[thejadedmonkey]

If you wait until you get a college ID, you'll save a lot. It might be worth it.

 

[abijnk]

I don't know where you live, but here in The Galaxy, the Apple store sells RAM and installs it for you.

That's cool! I didn't know.

 

[MacLadybug]

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

They didn't do that on my iMac or BlackBook... I got hosed!

 

[SoybeanStasher]

Also, their "buy back" is a rip off. They require you to give them the memory when they do it, you don't save anything. It's their way of making money on the 4GB, then putting the 2GB into another system at the factory and making money again. They're not doing you any favors with the "buy back."

No, but it does let you retroactively make up for not ordering the MBP with 4GB of RAM in the first place. The two 1GB sticks in the base MBP are practically worthless on eBay, likely due to the fact that no notebook is going to ship with less than 2GB of RAM these days. That makes the $150 price not terribly worse than the $130ish you'd spend buying your own 4GB DDR3 RAM, and presumably with the benefit of being able to have that RAM replaced, if ever found defective, at your local Apple store without having to make a warranty claim by mail.

 

[bigjnyc]

yeah I am not in college yet. So I have no valid student ID other than my high school ID which is worth nothing.

just go with a friend or family member who has one.