Memory/HDD? upgrade in Late 2008 uMBP. Suggestions?

[vader1990]

Hi,

I have the 2.4Ghz, 15'' uMBP from October 2008. It has Snow Leopard on it. I'm an engineering student so I use programs such as Eclipse (for programming) and Matlab (modeling and simulations) extensively. I also have iTunes, Safari (with multiple tabs), Mail, iChat and MS Word open constantly. I only have 2GB of RAM and the stock 5400 rpm drive.

I have noticed that with all this running I often get some slowdowns. Its not that bad, and usually a run of iFreeMem gets the job done, but I was wondering if it was about time I upgraded either the RAM or the HDD on this machine?

Can you guys recommend what I should upgrade? Should I buy 2x2GB DDR3 or get the 4GB module (for a net of 5GB of RAM, should I consider 6GB? 8GB?), which is better? Will the HDD upgrade help any? SSD something I should look into?

Any and all suggestions are welcome!

Thanks for the help guys!!

 

[chrismacguy]

Im pretty sure that upping the RAM will help you much more than the HD. I run Wolfram Mathematica, Parallels, and all the other "apps" as well as Final Cut Express on my MacBook with 4GB RAM and dont have that many slowdowns. It was dreadful when I was on 1GB but going to 4GB helped loads. If you can afford it, boost it to 6 or 8 because that leaves you room for your needs to grow

I cant see an HD upgrade being necessary. I still run all my stuff of my Stock 120GB HD

 

[vader1990]

Im pretty sure that upping the RAM will help you much more than the HD. I run Wolfram Mathematica, Parallels, and all the other "apps" as well as Final Cut Express on my MacBook with 4GB RAM and dont have that many slowdowns. It was dreadful when I was on 1GB but going to 4GB helped loads. If you can afford it, boost it to 6 or 8 because that leaves you room for your needs to grow

I cant see an HD upgrade being necessary. I still run all my stuff of my Stock 120GB HD

Thank you for your assistance. I agree with you that a RAM upgrade will be the most beneficial for me, while the HDD may not do much. Do you think I'm better off buying a 4GB module for a total of 5GB or buy 2x2GB modules for a total of 4GB? A 4GB module will run me about $150, while 2x2GB will be more around $100. In either case I'm getting 4GB of memory, but with the extra $50 for the 4GB dimm, I have 5GB and a prospect of 8GB.

Last question, do you know if my model supports 8GB? I know it does 6GB for sure. Its the October 2008 uMBP 15'', 2.4GHz.

Thanks!