I was pricing a dual 1.8 G5 today (education), and I see the upgrade from 256 MB to 1GB is only $202. Why.. that's almost reasonable! It would cost me just as much from Crucial. Is this a new trend for Apple? 
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What?!? Apple charging a fair amount for RAM?
- Thread starter johnnowak
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slowtreme said:
Perhaps you should read the posts before answering. He wasnt talking about high prices but reasonable pricing.
Well, 202$ is for the upgrade from 256 to 1024? Then its perhaps better but not as good, because I think you can get an extra GB for this price, which would bring you to 256+1024.
johnnowak said:I was pricing a dual 1.8 G5 today (education), and I see the upgrade from 256 MB to 1GB is only $202. Why.. that's almost reasonable! It would cost me just as much from Crucial. Is this a new trend for Apple?
it might be because you are edu pricing it.
one thing to remember, they wont give you the edu price in store on ram sometimes, it depends on whether they have to remove another chip, something about how you need to keep the old chip so they figure the value of ram you're not using is equal to some (if not all) of your edu discount. (i think...my friend bought an ibook 14" and since that has the extra ram already thats what they told her.)
-carly
Yeah, edu pricing does seem to account for the difference. However, if you're making a big edu order, it probably now makes more sense to go ahead and have Apple install the memory for you than to do it yourself. Interesting. Remember back when Apple memory was more than twice the "street price"? They've come a long way.question fear said:
slowtreme said:
Um... he has more posts than you, and he's been here for nearly a year... Did you even read his post?
About the RAM: It's good to see Apple actually being competitively priced in te RAM department (atleast for educational orders). I know when I was pricing an eMac, the upgrade to a gig was very reasonable ($225). That's not that bad, but then again, I don't keep up with RAm prices on a regular basis...
Veldek said:
But doing so max's the RAM to 1.2gb before disposing of memory. With 1gb installed at the factory, you can easily move up to 2gb without waste.
Chip NoVaMac said:
True, but lets say you max out at 1.2g then want to go to 2g, you sell the 256 for $30-50 (cash in your pocket) then buy another 1g. Plus you save $16 ($202-$186) by buying from crucial. Also, we don't know if he was talking about the new one or the old one in which case he would have 8 sockets.
Still its nice to see that apple is gettin closer pricing (for those poor suckers that only look at apple upgrading the ram and not places like crucial)
I DID realize johnnowak's post claims that $202 for the upgrade is "almost reasonable". But "Almost" does not mean "It Is".
$202 for a 784MB of ram is about $50 to $100 more than 1gig can be purchased elsewhere for the same specs. Also, that is EDU pricing not what the rest of us pay.
So my sarcastic responce stands, mostly because I fail to see the "reasonable pricing". Didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings.
$202 for a 784MB of ram is about $50 to $100 more than 1gig can be purchased elsewhere for the same specs. Also, that is EDU pricing not what the rest of us pay.
So my sarcastic responce stands, mostly because I fail to see the "reasonable pricing". Didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings.
slowtreme said:
Where, exactly, can you buy a gig of G5-qualified RAM for $100-$150? Is the spec for the new 1.8 a lot lower than for the other G5s? Because a gig for the dual-2 runs ~$300.
Not all RAM is equal. Identically specked RAM -- same speed, latency, pairity, etc. -- can have drastically different performance and mean time between failures. It all has to do with manufacturing process and tolerance. Apple puts high-end RAM in their pro machines.
While I don't always pony up for the Apple RAM, I do buy top-of-the-line RAM when I do buy; consequently, it costs more.
But then again, I'm kinda' an elistist RAM snob.
For most people, the best-value Crucial RAM is great. Kinda' like a Dell hard drive is great. It's cheap, and it works.
While I don't always pony up for the Apple RAM, I do buy top-of-the-line RAM when I do buy; consequently, it costs more.
But then again, I'm kinda' an elistist RAM snob.
For most people, the best-value Crucial RAM is great. Kinda' like a Dell hard drive is great. It's cheap, and it works.
Deal In Store
You know.... people talk about how Apple charges too much for RAM and while I do see that in pricing, I must disagree about buying from third parties. I was going to purchase RAM from crucial.com but when I went into the Apple store here in Jersey, the salesman gave me a deal. Educational discount on the ibook, edu discount on apple care, and he gave me a deal on an extra 256 mb of RAM. The RAM cost me $.01. A penny.
I'm glad I didn't buy the RAM right away.
You know.... people talk about how Apple charges too much for RAM and while I do see that in pricing, I must disagree about buying from third parties. I was going to purchase RAM from crucial.com but when I went into the Apple store here in Jersey, the salesman gave me a deal. Educational discount on the ibook, edu discount on apple care, and he gave me a deal on an extra 256 mb of RAM. The RAM cost me $.01. A penny.
I'm glad I didn't buy the RAM right away.
BrianKonarsMac said:
Nope, and Apple doesn't make RAM. Your point?
Dell does buy hard drives in bulk, usually waiting until a price break that comes either as a model is reduced to clear inventories or when a new technology or advance makes other drives less desirable. They then use these drives in their consumer machines. They get the cheapest drives they can while meeting minimum specs set for the machine.
It's not a bad deal, either, because much of these savings are passed on to the customer. While the build quality or "cutting-edge"-ness of the drive (or both) could be a suspect, Dells volume pricing, combined with other non-trade-off components, such as the processors in the machines, make the computers an exceptional choice for the majority of computer users -- and at a great price.
Guess what I'm saying here is that Dell's (and their third-party hard drives, don't let me forget that
) are great -- but understand that the MTBF for these machines is much shorter than that of an Apple. And with an Apple, you pay for that reliability. My ancient Due 230 and dock is still chugging along some 10 years after I bought it. Only the battery has been replaced. I've got a six-year-old gateway that's on its second monitor and second CD drive. The floppy's been dead for years, and the video card's on its last leg. One of the RAM modules has gone bad and causes BSDs from time to time. (Hard drive hasn't failed yet.) Dell != Gateway, but the concept is similar.... and to bring things back around topic ... I stand by Apple RAM (Dolt! Should I say RAM purchased through Apple? You've got me all flustered.).
note: Gateway is not a hard drive manufacturer.
Alos, like someone mentioned, Apple buys their RAM in bulk. RAM could be one price and 3 months later Apple still has to keep the same price even if it has dropped. Apple also either throws away RAM that doesn't meet their standards (or like the displays, they might sell it to Dell/Sony/etc). Either way, if they find a lot of bad RAM in a batch it drives prices up a bit. If there's few bad RAM to be found, the price comes down a bit.
What kind of ram do you get 4 x 256, filling up all of your slots or 2 x 512? That's also important to know.
I just did the same upgrade(though I got the dev discount and it was only $180), I got 2x512. I guess I could have paid about the same and got memory from crucial, but it would have been 1 more package to track, 1 more thing to install, and since I will probably get a gig(or 2) more in a few months(if the prices drop), the extra 2x128s really wouldn't have been worth it. I'm not even sure how much I could get on eBay for them, because more than likely if you are in the market for pc3200 ram, it's going to be a bit bigger than 128..Dreadnought said:
Though this may need qualification. Unless you are getting other BTO options that you can't install yourself(ie upgraded video card), I would recommend you go with the stock config and upgrade the ram yourself. Apple seems to like to putz around with BTO computers. I ordered mine a week ago and they still haven't even shipped it. However if I were to order a stock computer, I could get it shipped same day....
Really makes BTO look less enticing(but I just couldn't resist the upgrade to the 9600XT for $40)
Huh? Have you read the posts people made about what kinda 3rd party RAM they buy around here? Not everyone buys BTO RAM from apple, neither does everyone buy from Crucial. A lot of people buy the cheapest RAM they can find from RAM search engines as long as the description has the 100% Apple compatible and life time warranty line in it.superninjagoat said:
You do realize it doesn't take much to get your RAM G5 certified aside from slapping a sticker on it that says so, plus the popular life time warranty on the side. Apple for ones doesn't check any of the "3rd party" RAM you buy, they don't have time, and they don't really care. And where do you get the price on 1GB (2x512) of PC3200 CAS3 for $300? Apple? Check newegg.com's prices. 512MB PC3200 CAS3 goes for $77. Heh, maybe that memory company should've slapped a Apple G5 approved sticker on it so they can jack up the price by 50%.jsw said:
I don't know about calling the RAM a "quality product". It seems to be bog standard CAS 3 RAM to me. Crucial's normal CAS 3 is cheaper and most likely better quality than what Apple use. If they used CAS 2 low latency RAM maybe they could justify the premium.
FuzzyBallz said:
The major premise of my argument is that identically speced RAM is not identical depending on factory tolerances and MTBF. See post #11 above. I am aware that not everyone that buys third party ram through Crucial. I'm using their brand as an abstract placeholder or token to represent commodity-based, third-party RAM dealers.
FuzzyBallz said:
I realize that the stock RAM in a Mac is the same "model" as the RAM you could get for much cheaper through a commodity-based, third-party RAM dealer. However, when manufacturers create product, they sell it by the bin. Based on production monitoring and sampling of that batch, a mean time between failures (MTBF) is established for that bin of RAM. Failure doesn't necessarily indicate a critical failure. It might be getting a "0" where you expected a "1" and having to flush the RAM buffer and reload the content from disk. Or it could cause an application fault every now and then when your computer accesses memory register X.
All RAM suffers from these problems. Some are just less likely to do it. Apple doesn't have to "test" each chip. They just buy a bin with a high MTBF and put it in their machines.
All this is not to say there isn't a mark-up on the RAM. It just that it's likely around 15 percent, not 50 percent. And you're paying that because Apple has access to bin MTBF and the consumer does not.
Finally, I want to stress that I understand that the difference between MTBFs is relatively minor, and is completely invisible to most users. If two application crashes a week versus one is acceptable to you, save the money. If it's not satisfactory, or you're specing a computer for a role as a server where reliability is paramount, perhaps you'd want to pony up for the higher-quality RAM. Perhaps not. To each his own.
btw, I love newegg.com.