Best RAM and HD to put into a Macbook

[The Big O]

New to the boards...so, hey.

I'm going to be converting from PC to OSX soon. I've been waiting to see what happens with the Merom chip for the laptops. I decided not to buy until after it becomes evident if the Macbook is going to get one or not, hopefully that's sooner rather than later.

This will be a Macbook, not a Pro, since I don't really need the stuff a Pro offers and can't justifiy the price difference.

At any rate, I'll be getting the fastest Macbook chipset available in white. I don't like black nor do I think it's fair to charge 200 more just for a different color. These aren't cars. It will also be stripped down, lowest amount of RAM and smallest HD possible. I've got an external 8x dual layer DVD super drive already for my PC, so I really could care less about that on my MB.

Here's what I'm looking to upgrade shortly after I get the Macbook. I want 2 GIGs of RAM. Plenty of posts on here on where to get RAM cheap, but I'm still a bit of a hardware novice (even though I work in IT) and am not sure what "type" of RAM to get. What specifications do I need to make sure are there for the RAM I'm going to buy.

Also, I have a ton of MP3s and M4As that I'm going to be putting on this thing. Thus, I'd like to get as big a HD as possible, preferably as fast as possible too. I'm considering 300gigs, if available. Are there restrictiosn on what type of HD I can get and how big it can be? This will be my first laptop so I'm not really inexperianced in this area. What type of connection interface do I need? What's the differnce between SATA and ATA?

Thanks for the help.

-Steve

 

[Jowl]

You'll need a 2.5" SATA HDD - the biggest you can get at the moment (at least in the UK) is 160gb.


Of course you could get an External 3.5" enclosure and get as big a drive as you can afford

I buy my ram from Crucial.

 

[Clydefrog]

you could maybe wait a month or so for the merom. but you are not getting a 300gb hd for a laptop. i think the highest out now is 200gb but i am unaware if it will work in macbook. you could also get an external hard drive.

 

[The Big O]

you could maybe wait a month or so for the merom. but you are not getting a 300gb hd for a laptop. i think the highest out now is 200gb but i am unaware if it will work in macbook. you could also get an external hard drive.

I've actually got a 300Gig External HD I use with my fiancee for back up. We don't have casual use for it, other than backing up music and files.

I have no idea on laptop HD sizes, so if 120gig or 200gig is as big as I can get, so be it.

-Steve

 

[jne381]

As the first reply made know, the largest HD I believe is available that will go into a MB is 160 GB. It is made by Hitachi, and runs at 5400 rpm

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Hitachi/0A28419/

There are smaller drives that run at 7200 rpm, the largest I know of are 100 GB, but reviews suggest that the higher speed is only noticeable for long tasks, not that big a difference for opening apps or what not.

As for RAM, Crucial is a very good supplier for RAM. They seem to charge more than other online vendors for it, but they are well know for having a very good product, and they are still significantly less in price when compared to Apple. I believe that they also have a three year warranty on their product. I would also look at Crucial on different days, and look using different browsers. I say this because of other posts on this forum about their use of dynamic pricing. In other words, it changes the price depending on what you looked at before. I am not how sure how true this is, but I have noticed weird pricing on their website. For instance, I noticed a significant price difference on MB RAM pricing between the White and the Black MB on one particular day. In any case, just keep your eyes open.

I hope this helps, and good luck.

 

[flyers1]

Shortly after getting my macbook, I added one of these GSkill 1Gb memory sticks. I have 1.25Gb of memory now and have had no problems. There is a thread around here somewhere with testimonials of people who use this memory without issue. Of course there are a bunch of different brands that will work fine. I'd only suggest staying away from the super cheap stuff from ebay. Most memory from reputable internet dealers like newegg, outpost, amazon, OWC, etc should be fine.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231069

As far as a hard drive, decide what you need to have with you all the time and what can stay on an external drive. I upgraded my macbook drive to a Seagate Momentus 120gb 5400rpm drive. That is plenty of room for my mp3 collection as well as a ton of other junk. But I have an external WD 250gb 7200rpm firewire drive that I use for backups and mass storage when I convert videos of my daughter to DVD, etc.

Enjoy the new macbook...