I knew when I purchased my MacBook that the 512MB of RAM which it came with wouldn’t suffice for my needs. I held off until I could justify upgrading the RAM as I have the luxury of owning two Macs. I use my iMac for anything intensive and my MacBook as a second machine. As my iMac is home alone in Cork and I’m up in the “Big Smoke” of exotic Dublin, the time had finally come to upgrade.
And thus began a little bit of research into the matter of upgrading RAM on a MacBook..
The first thing you need to do is to find out what type of RAM comes installed on your MacBook. You can check this by clicking on the Apple Icon and by going to ‘About This Mac’. The second row will indicate the type of RAM you have. In my case I have 2GB 667 HMz DDR2 SDRAM (previously I had 512MB).
Once you know what you need to buy you need to find a reseller. Steer well clear of Apple when buying RAM. A quick search for RAM at Applestore.ie indicates that 2GB of RAM would cost me €290!
Crucial are by far the cheapest supplier of RAM. I purchased the same 2GB of RAM which Apple had priced at €290 for €70. That’s more than a 400% difference in price.
The Crucial website is extermely user friendly when selecting your product. They have a step by step ’shop assistant’ which guides you to the correct product before checking out. Be sure to avoid any confusion by double checking your processor type when selecting your model as there are Intel Core Duo and Intel Core 2 Duo types available.
RAM has never been cheaper so go for as much RAM as you can afford.
I ordered my 2GBs of RAM on a Tuesday evening from Crucial’s American based store and I had the package in my hands on a Friday morning in Dublin! I was extremely impressed with their speedy delivery!
The actual RAM installation was an absolute breeze. The only thing you should be made aware of are Apple’s use of tiny screws. You will need a screwdriver such as a Phillips size 00 screwdriver to complete the job. There is an excellent guide on how to install RAM on a MacBook on apples’ site.
When placing the RAM within the slot be sure to apply firm pressure in order to get it into the bracket provided. If you place your fingers at either end of the inserted RAM and if you notice that you can slightly nudge the RAM then you haven’t applied enough pressure.
I have a single GB of RAM on my iMac and no doubt I’ll be upgrading that in the not too distant future as well. 
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:52 am
Glad to hear you had a good experience with Crucial
We use them all the time, though the one time I tried to get RAM for one of my personal servers it was a total disaster and I ended up buying genuine HP RAM
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:55 am
Ouch.
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:58 am
Yeah
It seems that there were two *possible* types of RAM for that server and their advisor / wizard thing recommended the wrong type. By the time they told me that I’d already wasted too much time and was getting tired of having to schedule downtime on IWF to do the upgrade, so I just went to hardware.com and got working RAM.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Your positive experience inspired me to upgrade my iMac, from 1GB.
Crucial were out-of-stock, so I picked up 1GB of Kingston RAM from Elara. About €40, and another €9 delivery. Arrived pretty sharpish once the delivery guy rang for directions, and 10 minutes later my iMac was happily running with 2GB… did have one false start, but that was my fault for being to gentle about inserting the RAM…
I always say it’s the little things that make Apple so special. I couldn’t believe it when I laid my iMac down – the instructions for opening the RAM access door and installing RAM are printed on the bottom of the base – who else but Apple would think of that?
Next on the agenda, Leopard – once the credit card cools down after the inevitable roasting it’s going to get in the run up to Christmas…
November 7th, 2007 at 1:41 am
I did the same thing, was too gentle with the RAM. A bit of umphh is needed. Have you noticed the difference with the RAM?
November 7th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Yeah, it frightened the life out of me when it didn’t boot, and then the power light sure can strobe brightly when required!
Well, everything was sweet enough with 1GB from the start, but I when I looked at the price, I had to go for the upgrade – prices aren’t going to stay this low for ever. Besides, I’ve now had my first encounter with upgrading Apple hardware, and lived! The battery on my iPod will be the next challenge, but that will be some time yet…
Not noticing much of a difference, but then, I haven’t been pushing it with any video encoding or such. I will, next week, when I get back from my road trip around Ireland with a couple of hours footage!