Adam Kuban: Kublog

A friend recently asked for advice on buying a MacBook. Here’s what I told her.

What you quoted (2GB) is the default amount of RAM. The MacBook supports up to 4GB.

You totally want to max out the RAM in that thing. But if they offer to sell you RAM in the store, don’t buy it. It’s WAY EXPENSIVE from Apple. Get it from crucial.com, where it’s like half the price or less. Crucial will walk you thru the steps, asking you what machine you have and then hooking you up with the right chip(s). And putting new RAM in a MacBook is easy.

Wait until after you get the machine before ordering the RAM, because you’re going to want to see how Apple has loaded it with RAM chips. A MacBook has two slots for RAM, and, if they’re still doing it this way, your out-of-the-box Mac will have both slots filled, each with a 1GB chip, to total 2GB. This kinda sucks, b/c to max it out at 4GB, you’ll have to buy two 2GB chips instead of one 2GB chip to add to your default RAM.

It’s pretty much a no-brainer to max it out. The one thing I think is disingenuous about Apple is that the amount of RAM Macs come loaded with is like the total minimum you’ll need to run it. I’ve owned 5 Macs in the last 10 years and have always found this to be the case. If you do anything more taxing than turning it on and doing some light email/web-browsing and word processing, 2GB is not going to cut it. Even web-surfing will be slow with only 2GB. I know you will be using Photoshop/imaging, so you’ll want the zippiness of 4GB.

It’s good you’re getting the bigger 2.4Ghz machine. If you want it to last a few years, you’ll need it. I like the black Macbook, but it comes at a premium.