No, upgrading from 4G to 8G using Apple's online store option costs educational buyers $900.
The MBP comes with two of these chips. If I just needed 4G RAM, I wouldn't have asked for help.
That's why I save hundreds of dollars by removing the default configuration of two 2G chips and replacing with 2 third party 4G chips. My point is that Apple charges me $900 dollars to do it, while I could do it with third party chips for somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 to $650.
That may be true, but Apple promoted the expectation of such an accommodation by allowing me to configure my 2006 purchase of a MacBook Pro with 1x1GB chip instead of 2X512M chips pre-installed.
I don't expect that there would be much demand for that memory at the moment. I do suspect that many MBP buyers might be in the position of needing to sell that commodity, however.
I never mentioned anything about buying 1G chips. I wouldn't consider any options involving that.
The problem here is that you're asking for help but you weren't very clear about what you wanted in your post. You never stated which model you purchasing and what you were buying. Default RAM is different, depending on the model. It could be 2GB or 4GB. You asked a general question and I gave you a general reply.
Furthermore, I don't think you fully understood what I was said and why I said what I did.
If you go with the 4GB option on your MBP (I'm assuming 15"), the most you stand to lose in terms of buying stuff you'll never use (in case you swap out to 8GB) is about $60, the retail cost of 4GB of DDR3.
I don't know about your area, but going rate in these parts for 4GB of DDR3 is about $30-35 on Craiglist. You can do it or not do it, that's your choice. If you do, that means the RAM in the MBP is only costing you $25-30.
The 8GB is something you can get on your own for about $600-$650. That price consideration is a separate issue from any potential monetary loss by not being able to purchase just one chip.
You are asking what is essentially a nonsensical question.
You want Apple to give you 1x4GB chip, which costs at least $300+ retail in exchange for 2x2GB which costs around $60 retail. That's if you were expecting them to do it for free. Why should Apple take a ~$200-250 hit so you can save yourself a few bucks?
OTOH, if you pay Apple for 1x4GB chip, that's at least $500 ($450 if we consider educational discount) by Apple pricing when you could just pay ~$150 more and get 2x4GB from NewEgg?
So how does either of those two scenarios begin to make any sense?
When difference in cost between 512MB and 1GB chips hasn't been more than $25 in years, so it probably wasn't that unreasonable if Apple did it for you in the past, but now we're talking about what's essentially a $250+ difference in value.
