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MBP 13: 2GB or 4GB RAM? | 250GB or 320GB

A

arMac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 13, 2009
8
0
The 2.26GHz MBP 13 offers an upgrade of 2GB to 4GB and from 160GB to 250/500GB.
Is it ok to upgrade it directly from the store:
2GB to 4GB for 100$
160GB to 250/500 GB for 50/100$

Or should I just by the base version of the MBP 13 and then buy RAM and HDD separately and upgrade it? - For this will I have to open the MBP myself and upgrade the parts or the Apple store will do it on my request?
 
Buy the parts elsewhere. You'll save money and have parts leftover; you could put the hard drive in an enclosure and put the memory in another computer or sell it.
 
Bill Gates said:
Buy the parts elsewhere. You'll save money and have parts leftover; you could put the hard drive in an enclosure and put the memory in another computer or sell it.
Click to expand...

Can you please suggest some site to buy it and a guide/tutorial to do it?
[ I am a noob-Mac, so will take time to know things, kindly bear...]
 
arMac said:
Can you please suggest some site to buy it and a guide/tutorial to do it?
[ I am a noob-Mac, so will take time to know things, kindly bear...]
Click to expand...
The manual actually includes all the information you need since it's actually really simple and both parts are considered user-replaceable.

As for parts, I would recommend newegg.com, zipzoomfly.com, tigerdirect.com, macsales.com; just buy from whomever gives you the best out-the-door price.
 
Bill Gates said:
The manual actually includes all the information you need since it's actually really simple and both parts are considered user-replaceable.

As for parts, I would recommend newegg.com, zipzoomfly.com, tigerdirect.com, macsales.com; just buy from whomever gives you the best out-the-door price.
Click to expand...

Ok.
And how to utilize the HDD which i will take out of the MBP?
 
arMac said:
Ok.
And how to utilize the HDD which i will take out of the MBP?
Click to expand...
For that I recommend purchasing a FireWire 800 enclosure from one of the aforementioned websites. If FireWire 800 is too expensive, you can get lower-priced FireWire 400 or USB enclosures that will work as well, but at much lower speeds. Also keep in mind that if you get a FireWire 400 enclosure you will need a FW400 to FW800 adapter since your MBP only has one FW800 port.
 
i paid the extra $50 for 250GB HDD, the memory I purchased from www.crucial.com for $75

both uMBP 13" and memory comes next week. making the memory upgrade is very easy.

I will switch out HDD later in life when SSD's come down (and they fix, hopefully the SATA 1.5 limitation)
 
arMac said:
Ok.
And how to utilize the HDD which i will take out of the MBP?
Click to expand...

Either sell it or buy an enclosure to use it as an external drive. Or put it in another laptop, if you have one with smaller drive :).

And when you look for memory, make sure it's Mac-compatible. Some RAM out there doesn't work with Macs, for whatever reason.
 
Bill Gates said:
The manual actually includes all the information you need since it's actually really simple and both parts are considered user-replaceable.

As for parts, I would recommend newegg.com, zipzoomfly.com, tigerdirect.com, macsales.com; just buy from whomever gives you the best out-the-door price.
Click to expand...

+1 for newegg and macsales.com.

2GB and 250GB.. Get memory and drive else where.

macsales actually gives you a few dollars for your old memory in rebate form.. may save you an extra $15 or so.

Get the WD 320/7K black drive, put the 250GB in an external case and use it for time machine / scratch..

This is one of my favorite external cases (I wish it came in FW800 though)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817347013
 
I bought the 13" model with the default specs, and intended to upgrade to 4GB RAM from www.crucial.com - which worked out half the price of doing the upgrade through Apple.

However having got the MBP and seeing how fast it is, I may not upgrade quite so soon after all! Having bought memory through Crucial before though I would recommend it. Installing it is dead easy too.
 
Stardotboy said:
I bought the 13" model with the default specs, and intended to upgrade to 4GB RAM from www.crucial.com - which worked out half the price of doing the upgrade through Apple.

However having got the MBP and seeing how fast it is, I may not upgrade quite so soon after all! Having bought memory through Crucial before though I would recommend it. Installing it is dead easy too.
Click to expand...

Great !!
Thanks for the encouragement :)
Can anyone please give a link for a guide or tutorial about the upgrading of RAM?
 
aleksandra. said:
Either sell it or buy an enclosure to use it as an external drive. Or put it in another laptop, if you have one with smaller drive :).

And when you look for memory, make sure it's Mac-compatible. Some RAM out there doesn't work with Macs, for whatever reason.
Click to expand...

Will a drive from the new 13" MBP work in a 1st Gen 2.16 17" MBP?

eV
 
arMac said:
Or should I just by the base version of the MBP 13 and then buy RAM and HDD separately and upgrade it? - For this will I have to open the MBP myself and upgrade the parts or the Apple store will do it on my request?
Click to expand...

Trust me, it's much easier to do it yourself.

And yes, buy the base 13" MBP. Then if you want upgrades, buy RAM and a bigger HDD from various sites as mentioned above.

Good luck! ;)
 
I was also hoping to do something similar. Get the base of Macbook pro 13" 2.26Ghz processor 2Gm ram and a 160Gb hardrive.

Then later upgrade with 4Gb or 8Gb ram with also a 256Gb ssd.

But ssd are really expensive maybe ill wait for the ssd end of the year.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

I will be upgrading my new 13" MBP to 4gb ram and 500gb hdd, I'll put the old 160gb hdd into my ps3.
 
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