MBP Unibody easy to work on???

[SoCalRich]

How easy is the new Unibody MBP to work on? I have an old PB and that was a real challenge to replace the airport card. Lots and lots and lots of tiny screws of different lengths. Had to keep track of exactly where they went. iFixIt provided a very good proceedure to get the job done however.

I would like to make any changes like a SSD or hard drive, RAM change or whatever, myself. I have all the proper tools. I have heard or read somewhere that the Unibody's were easier to work on. Is this true?

 

[John Kotches]

How easy is the new Unibody MBP to work on? I have an old PB and that was a real challenge to replace the airport card. Lots and lots and lots of tiny screws of different lengths. Had to keep track of exactly where they went. iFixIt provided a very good proceedure to get the job done however.

I would like to make any changes like a SSD or hard drive, RAM change or whatever, myself. I have all the proper tools. I have heard or read somewhere that the Unibody's were easier to work on. Is this true?

I do no have a MAC frame of reference, my MBP is my first MAC.

I did not find replacing the hard drive nor optibay especially difficult. Okay, the Optibay screws are in tight quarters so if you're ham handed like me it could theoretically be difficult. Not too bad if I do say so myself.

The Hard drive was easy, and the RAM looks easy. I'm going to 8GB sometime down the road but I'm not there yet.

 

[emiljan]

As far as installing ram and a new hard drive, its fairly easy. Once you get the bottom cover off everything is exposed. The bottom cover has 10 screws which 3 are considerably longer than the rest. Removing those is a breeze and then the guts of the computer are exposed.

The hard drive is a little harder because it requires a torx 6 screwdriver to remove the screws that hold the hd in place.

 

[Synchromesh]

I've taken apart various Macs from Macbooks to unibody Macbook to Air to Ibook and Powerbook.

The worst was by far iBook. I want to find the person that designed it and punch them in the face hard. It's absolutely ridiculous to be forced to follow a complicated procedure to take the entire machine apart just to change the hard disk.

Anyway, the unibody MBP should be fairly easy. Just a bunch of regular Phillips screws on the cover and then mostly torx-type screws on hard disks along with some more Phillips. Altogether shouldn't take more than a few minutes once you get the hang of it and screw types while different have fairly logical placement so shouldn't be a biggie.

 

[rekhyt]

I have a MacBook (2007) and replaced the RAM and hard drive easily. Even though it was not an unibody it was a lot easier to replace the internals of the laptop, compared to a Windows laptop.

I have never taken apart my MacBook Pro (Unibody 2009) but I have opened up the battery place and it looks pretty easy to open.

The newer unibodies don't have the replaceable battery so it looks slightly harder to replace.

 

[SoCalRich]

Thanks

I appreciate the feedback everyone...