FYI: Your MacBook Pro should have 4GB of RAM | Hacker News Reader

FYI: Your MacBook Pro should have 4GB of RAM

I was involved in an HN thread yesterday, and someone indicated they had 2GB of RAM in their MacBook Pro.

Any sort of hacker should really have 4GB... buying two 2GB only costs about $60, and it's as simple as two screws, removing the old RAM, and popping the chips in to upgrade.

So, if you have a 2GB MacBook Pro, it's time to upgrade. You'll immediately notice the difference.

EDIT: The commenter was right, I did put in two 2GB chips to replace 2 1GB chips. It does cost about $60 bucks for both chips.

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Seriously? This is front-page material now, telling other users how they should have their computers configured?

Also, don't some of the older MBP's have a 3GB max?

Yes, they do have a 3GB limit. You can put 4GB in the system, but OS X Leopard will only use the first 3GB. Speaking from experience with a circa late-2007 MBP Core2 Duo.

Yeah, the older (pre-LED backlighting) MBPs have a limit of 3 gigs. You can give it a 4th gig, but the system just ignores it.

I believe the 2GB option on the 13" macbook pro is two 1GB sticks. So you'd have to buy two "chips".

2x2gb laptop DDR3 goes for about $60, so while the language of the original post is not clear, the price is correct.

In that case, I need to make a purchase. :)

Apple considers RAM user serviceable, so upgrading to 4GB wont void your Apple care. Just take the time for a week to monitor your RAM usage. You'll probably notice that you max out 2GBs a lot. If you do any kind of virtualization, you definitely need 4GB so you can allocate a decent amount of RAM to your virtual machine. If you aren't doing any virtualization... why not?

A previous poster is correct that you do need to buy two sticks. Also, I would hold on to your Apple memory just in case. Even though installing your own RAM is ok, you'll want to pop back in the Apple memory before you send it in for service. There's no guarantee they wont swap out your RAM for new Apple RAM while they are trying to diagnose the problem.

I really need to get a new computer, a 2006 MBP only has a 2GB limit! And I'm currently using 95% of it...as well as a 1.76GB swap.

Though getting a new computer (Mac) is easier said than done, I definitely can't afford one anytime soon. Putting one on a credit card seems so tempting... :D

While it may be cheap, it still amazes me that software can somehow manage to use all that memory.

You should also drop in a half terabyte drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148...

No, you should put in a SSD. The performance is awesome; put your big files on a server.

Or depending on your priorities, get a smaller 7200RPM drive for the same price. Faster seek and transfer times make it feel more responsive, at the cost of reduced battery life.

Btw, have you seen how much the official upgrade from 4GB to 8GB costs?

Yeah, but I'm not sure what that has to do with upgrading to 4GB... he isn't telling us to add an additional 4GB to make it 8GB total.

Also, even 8GB of RAM for a laptop in two DIMMs from Newegg or Crucial is $650, so in my opinion 8GB is out of the question for now, official upgrade or not.

Yeah but that is DDR3. The current price at crucial for 2 sticks of laptop DDR3 is $900. The current price of 4GB of the same memory is $64. Huge difference for the high density sticks. Though if you are running ddr2 you can get 8GB for 400.

he is talking about doing it yourself.

upgrading ram is extremely easy, you just open up the computer, and stick the ramstick in.

2GB chips already ? Man, Moore's law never ceases to surprise me.

Your MacBook (Pro)? should have 4GB+ of RAM considering the marginal difference in price.

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