[OSX-Users] Re: RAM for a macbook

[Steve Harris]

On 2010-08-23, at 03:08, Hugh Glaser wrote:

> I hesitate to venture into such informed company, and not wholly agree with
> a tiny bit of it, but... :-)
> 
> On 19/07/2010 18:13, "Steve Harris" <swh at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>> On 2010-07-19, at 17:44, Marcus Cobden wrote:
>>> On 19 Jul 2010, at 17:33, Christopher Gutteridge wrote:
>>> 
>>>> My macbook (White, 2Ghz) is feeling a bit slow and I think it would benefit
>>>> from an increase in RAM. (currently 1GB)
>>>> 
>>>> How much can I upgrade it to?
>>> 
>>> Depends on the model:
>>> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Macbook#Model_specifications
>>> 
>>>> Is it worth it?
>>> 
>>> Yes.
>>> 
>>> I may have imagined it, but I got the feeling that my battery lasted a little
>>> less longer with more RAM. I have no idea if this differs between brands of
>>> RAM though.
>> 
>> That's normal, it's because the disk is doing less work.
> Only so far.
> If you can afford shitloads of RAM, then the battery will spend its time
> powering the extra RAM that is not being used.
> Probably not a problem.
> But the battery life when asleep may be reduced, as it is keeping the RAM
> alive.

That's probably true, yes. Current generation machines seem to be very efficient when asleep though. I didn't notice any difference on my macbook pros going 2->4, but I wasn't looking out for it. I did notice the difference in runtime though.

> Mind you, this was a few years ago, and I am sure that someone will tell me
> that it is no longer true.
> 
> But a 1->2 upgrade is likely to be stunning.

Also a 2->4 upgrade is well worth it, in my experience.

> It is possible that maybe 0.75 Gig of the memory is used most of the time
> (system, etc.), and so you will then get 5 times that memory for the other
> stuff.
> And if you can get to 4 Gig (I wrote Meg first time, as I still remember
> machines with K!), then the machine will be better and is likely to last
> longer without additional cost or upgrade hassle.
> 
> One of the things that has changed over the last few years is how long
> machines last. Used to be a couple of years, but a machine like yours, that
> was bought a year or two (or more?) ago, will still be good for maybe 3 or 4
> more years, unless you are doing fancy graphics processing (or similar) on
> it.
> 
> Laptops tend to be hard to upgrade bits of memory, so put the most you can
> afford in now.

That seem to vary a lot, the difficulty of upgrading RAM in last 3 Mac laptops I've had were: trivial (no screwdriver needed), almost impossible, small amount of screwdriver work needed - in chronological order.

- Steve