Thinking about jazzing up my late 2008 MacBook 5,1 Al unibody

Hi guys, I am considering putting a SSD and more ram in my unibody 2008 Macbook 2.4ghz 4g RAM

So, I am well behind the curve here but it looks like you can upgrade this machine to 8gigs ram so I think I am going to do that first of all.
I'm running ML and it looks like my EFI is upgraded.

For $80 I can get two sticks of these which seems like a no-brainer.


And then I was going to get one of those OWC Data Doublers and putting the old drive in it and in place of the old HD drive bay putting a 128G Samsung Electronics 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch 128 SATA_6_0_gb Solid State Drive MZ-7PD128BW in there.

I would do this because I have read that the macbooks sometimes don't like booting from one of those optical drive disks and that the max speed would be 3gb sec not 6. So why not put the SSD in the regular drive bay, boot from it and then put the old HD in the data doubler for storage.

Total cost = $250.
Not bad, no?

I don't really want to break the bank on this, especially since i am planning on getting a new MBA at the end of the summer but it would be nice to get a few more years out of my Macbook.

What do you guys think?

 

well, i did it!

 

haha - i'll let you know.
i'm a scientist, maybe i'll try them both out separately and geek out a bit with it

 

it's awesome! i am having some issues getting my laptop to sleep when i close the lid, but i am working on sorting that issue out and i don't anticipate a big problem. it might be a ML bug as opposed to the changes i made.

I can tell you that the SSD made a much bigger difference than the RAM chips, but i did play around with just the RAM upgrade and I noticed everything ran a little smoother. part of the problem is that mac mail is a bit of a memory hog. i have two accounts in there, both with 10 years of emails so it really sucks up a tonne of ram for whatever reason. probably something i've got set up wrong, but freeing up ram on the back end helped resolve that.

but the SSD... it's so awesome. the first time you play with one you'll spend a good chunk of time just closing and opening programs. mail, for example, opens instantly. no more of that dock bouncing up and down crap while you wait forever for your program to open. the bootup time went from 70 seconds to 25. this is a 5 year old laptop and it runs better than ever.

for $250 shipped it's like a brand new computer. i'm very happy I did this.
i was a bit wary of whether or not it was a good investment - i mean i doubt i could get 250 for the laptop if i sold it, why put that much into fixing it up? i wouldn't do that with a car, for example - but it really breathed new life into my machine! and if it does die on me, i can do whatever i want with that SSD and at worst i'm out $80 if i can't find a use for the ram.

if you are toying with doing this i would say go for it

 

my pleasure - and no problem. no, if you can install a hard drive you can install a ram chip. if you have a removable battery you just take the rest of the bottom off, remove the divider in the middle and then you can pop the ram chips out - there are squeeze tabs, take the top one out and then the bottom reverse it all and you're done. there are a million videos and how-tos online. super easy

 

I am very happy with it. Sitting in the sun eating frozen yogurt with it in Montreal right now as a matter of fact.

The only minor issue I've had is that I am having a hard time getting the machine to reliably stay asleep when I close the lid. But that could be unrelated to the ssd.

Ultimately though it was money well spent. It's like I got a brand new machine for 250

 

yep - i went ahead and upgraded to mountain lion. I have had some complaints with ML and some of the choices they made that kind of drive me crazy but most of that is because I was used to the Snow Leopard gestures so I don't think you'll have a big problem. Despite my misgivings there are some other features that I really like and I think I'll stay with ML and then upgrade to mav in the fall. All in all I think you'll be happy.

If i were you i would wait until the laptop arrives and you've had time to get used to it. If for no other reason that you may decide it's not worth putting another 2-300 into a computer that you don't think will last. I've been the only owner of my laptop so I have no reason to believe it won't last a few more years

feel free to post back or PM me if you have questions/comments when you go to install. have fun with your new computer!

Edit- oops it looks like you've already ordered the RAM and SSD. my bad, i'm sure it'll work great for you

Like with most things I buy online i just go to amazon, go to the relevant department subtopic and arrange by highest rated- that's how i found both the RAM and the drive. Happy with both.

 

Funny, i was forced to switch to mac for work as well. While I was waiting for it to arrive i go myself XP, vmware and a bunch of other XP-related software suites that i thought i'd use...i think i'd had the thing 6 months before i ran into a windows-only requirement. it really is very intuitive. There's nothing you won't be able to do right off the bat, it's just a matter of getting used to the little things.

For me the trackpad+gestures alone is worth the price of admission so although my first mac was free, i've purchased macs almost exclusively since

I will say regarding the price/benefit while i think the $80 for the RAM is a no-brainer, i think you'll see a bigger improvement with the SSD. In fact I know that's the case.

 

definitely. some of those cables can pop out pretty easily. take a trip over to ifixit and look up something like replacing the logic board to give you a nice global picture of what needs to come off and, more importantly, go back on.

if you can't sort it out, i would take it into the store and see if they can help.

 

good luck!