also, does crucial sell RAM for macbooks? it only has ibook and powerbook listed.
Of course they do, just click on Apple in the Brand and you will see them.
http://www.crucial.com/store/listProductLine.asp?cat=RAM&mfr=Apple&submit=Go
But don't use that link, use the one at the top of the page, so MacRumors gets a tiny commission.
Will XXX from NewEgg or Frys or whatever, work?
Sure, they might. And in a minority of cases, they might not and you'll have some cost and time in returning. You already know what I'm going to say -- Buy from a dealer who knows Macs and is prepared to offer a compatibility guarantee with your particular machine and offers a no charge (No shipping charges, no restocking charges) return for refund or replacement if it doesn't work. Yes, it may be $10 or $20 more than the cheapest. For most people, the security of knowing is worth it. Mac Adepts who want to do the testing themselves might be ok with taking the extra degree of risk to save a few bux.
It's hard to say, prices are day to day. The drop of 1 Gb modules to the US$35-50 area this quickly is unprecendented for mainstream memory -- not the fact that it dropped, but the magnitude of the drop, from $130 to $35, in lless then 6 months. Although the prices have continued sliding down I have the sense that, with mail in rebates proliferating, the manufacturers are jockeying for marketshare and selling below their bar, which would imply the price raising at some point when enough sellers blink and opt out of the race.
DDR2 will stabilize, then eventually rise as DDR3 RAM hits the mainstream, and the chip foundries pull production lines off of DDR2 to make DDR3. This is why we are still seeing DDR Powerbook RAM holding their prices, while DDR2 falls -- there's abundant supply and competition in DDR2, but DDR components are starting to get in short supply, we are even seeing 1 - 2 week backorders on DDR from Kingston. So DDR prices are high relative to DDR2 and are not likely to come down. As will happen to DDR2 in a year or two.
But there are always likely to be short term fluctuations.
Really? I thought that if you were going to be running a lot of programs at once, the extra ram was better (vs. if you tend to run only a couple at a time, the dual channel was better)?
