Looking to beef up my MacBook

[rikadik]

I've currently got a 1.83GHz Core Duo MacBook with 1GB Ram (2 x 512) and 60GB 5400rpm HDD. I'm planning on make the following upgrades:

- Memory: I'm looking to buy 2Gb DDR2 667Mhz either as one stick or two 1gb sticks. Is it better to put in 2 x 1Gb or have one 2Gb stick and one 512mb sticks making 2.5gb overall?

- Hard Drive: I want to put a Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB drive, its a 7200rpm drive which can be had reasonably inexpensively. Is the extra speed worth it or would I be better going for a 5400rpm drive with a larger capacity? Thing is, performance and storage are both really important as I have about 35GB of music that I'd like to get back on my MacBook from my firewire drive and I also plan to use Logic Studio 8 which would definitely benefit from fast read/write times.

- Parallels & XP/Vista: I want to put parallels on here just so I can run the odd windows program. I've been using boot camp recently but I'm tired of rebooting between the two. I'm currently using XP Pro, any benefit in getting Vista Basic? Can my computer handle Parallels? I only plan to use Office (i dont have a legit Mac version) and the odd random application.

- Leopard: when Leopard comes out, will I be able to install it without losing all my data and applications I currently have in Tiger? I know I'm going to have to do a reinstall of Mac OS when I get my new hard drive, but would probably wait for Leopard to upgrade my hardware if it'd mean losing all my data twice.

Finally, is my 1.83Mhz Core Duo a bottleneck on this system? Should I sell this MacBook and get a Core 2 Duo 2 MHz when Leopard is released?

Many thanks!

 

[dnuggett]

1. You can't make it 2.5GB overall. The max RAM for a MacBook is 2GB.
2. I use the exact hard drive you are thinking of. It being noticeable or worth it to you is dictated entirely by how you are going to use the machine. For me absolutely, because I do some on the fly video editing on it. If all you will do is use Photoshop, office, music, web etc. then it won't be noticeable.
3. Your computer can handle Parallels fine when you get done with the RAM upgrade you are planning. I wouldn't run Parallels though, I like the VMWare solution better. It's called Fusion.
4. You will be able to upgrade to Leopard w/o being forced to lose your data. However a nice backup copy is never a bad idea, especially before an OS upgrade.
5. For 99.999% of the ways you can use a computer, that CPU is not a bottleneck. So my educated guess is no, it's not a bottleneck for you.


Since most of your questions (like every other thread asking these types of questions) requires someone to understand how you use the machine- How do you use the machine?

 

[TheStu]

I have the same machine, with a bigger hard drive.

1: dnuggett is right, furthermore, since the MacBook has onboard video, it actually does benefit from having the RAM in matched pairs in Dual Channel (at least that is my understanding)

2: I am personally eyeing the Hitachi 7K200 drive. The 16MB cache is more important to me than carrying another 50GB of stuff with me (I have an 80GB small external for just that reason).

3: I second dnuggett's recommendation for Fusion, however your current setup will handle it just fine in terms of installing it and doing some sample stuff. At one point I was dualbooting Vista Business and Tiger, and then was Fusion VMing the Vista partition. I had 512MB RAM and a core each to the OSes. So long as I wasn't doing much in either, it would be fine, Parallels.... not so much. Plus as of this writing, Fusion works in Leopard, Parallels does not.

4: If you have an external large enough to store it, I would recommend getting Carbon Copy Cloner. Then, partition the external so it is just large enough to hold your MacBook hard drive. Run Carbon Copy Cloner to it (make it bootable) and that will take care of you when you get the new drive, and to serve as a backup. And you will be able to Archive and Install Leopard on top of Tiger, 99% of your applications will work just fine. ANy that don't probably will just have to be updated.

5: The Core 2 Duos are not significantly faster than the Core Duos. They bring 64bit, lower temps, and a higher RAM cap (on the MBPs) to the equation, but clock for clock, a 2GHz Core Duo is about on par with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo.

 

[rikadik]

dnuggett and TheStu - thanks for your advice it has been very helpful.

As to how I plan to use the machine...

I will be using a virtual machine for a few untaxing programs. I do no gaming and my only semi-pro use will be Logic Studio 8. However this is where I think I will gain using a fast hard drive. I will be producing music and recording live instruments to the hard drive. However I do wonder whether this is really worthwhile as I have an external (mains powered) 250gb 7200rpm firewire drive which I have been using with Logic Pro 7 without any problems. In fact I think I've just convinced myself to get a 5400 rpm drive! I've got a bid on the 100gb Momentus 7200.1 drive at the moment for a very reasonable price so if I win it I'll go for the 7200, if I don't I may consider a slower drive.

As to RAM, is there any benefit of buying second hand Apple branded RAM as opposed to some cheap Crucial RAM like this?

Many thanks

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

I bought G.Skill ram for my Macbook and it works like a charm. There is no advantage.

 

[TheStu]

Apple branded RAM is just another company's RAM with an Apple sticker on it. I got some decent priced (not the cheapest, not the most expensive) Corsair RAM when I upgraded the RAM in my MacBook, have had no issues since.

 

[rikadik]

That's what I wanted to hear, thanks again.

 

[pinktank]

If you can still get in the external hitachi deal, you can have a 200gb 7200rpm for some effort and 130

 

[rikadik]

Originally posted by: pinktank
If you can still get in the external hitachi deal, you can have a 200gb 7200rpm for some effort and 130

What is this deal you talk of? Sounds good!

 

[bearxor]

I'm going to put a pretty firm strike against VMWare Fusion here. I hate it. I bought it from the recent buy.com deal for $35 since everyone was raving about it and I had a pirated copy of Parallels I was using.

It constantly locks up, staring at me even though I'm clicking the Window it won't let me use it. I have to minimize the windows and then bring it back up before it will work. Unity seems... just kind of iffy. In the few months I had Parallels it worked 100% better.

Parallels was also much faster. XP with 512MB of RAM flew. XP with 768MB of RAM is sluggish and consistently slower in Fusion. I downloaded and am currently using the latest 1.1b, but it's not a significant improvement at all, besides being able to access the start menu now.

I'll probably stick with Fusion because I bought it and I think VMWare will have a better support and upgrade path than Parallels will. I'll simply hope performance increases over time.

Honestly, I think they'r aimed at two different audiences. Parallels is for people who will be using Windows applications a lot and Fusion is for mostly OSX users who occasionaly run a Windows program. Whereas with Parallels I was constantly using my Windows applications, with Fusion I'm finding that I'm avoiding having to use Windows programs no matter what kind of hassle I may have to go through to get OS X to do the same thing. Maybe that's the point anyways.

Maybe a good idea for you is to sidestep Windows completely and pick up Crossover.

 

[alfa147x]

well my neighbors C2D macbook can handle 4 gb of ram, i am looking at an upgrade soon as well

 

[TheStu]

MacBook or MacBook Pro?