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Should I upgrade Macbook 10.4.11 or buy brand new Macbook Pro?

  • 10-11-2011 12:35am
    #1
    JenMo
    Registered Users Posts: 5 ✭


    Hey,

    If anyone can advise me here, I'd be so grateful. I've had a few people so far telling me contradictory things. I need a serious upgrade on my laptop because I need it to edit video (HD) in Final Cut and also for Adobe Creative Suite.

    So I have a four year old Macbook (10.4.11) with 1 GB Ram DDR2 SDRAM, 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2. I was told by a guy in Back from the Future in Dublin that I could get my RAM upgraded to 4GB and he'd also install a Solid state drive (for €300). He said it would be close to the performance of a Macbook Pro but not quite (because of the old graphics card and processor). I have been neglectful also over the years by using my Macbook on my bed so it overheats a lot which I think could mean further wear and tear.

    Am I better off just buying a new Macbook Pro (13" 2.8 GHz version) or is the old Macbook upgrade worthwhile?
    Sorry for waffling, but hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction. :)


Comments

  • #2
    Dont be at yourself
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,587 ✭✭✭✭Dont be at yourself


    I upgraded my girlfriend's macbook (to 3gb ram + SSD) and was amazed by how responsive it was. On day-to-day stuff it appeared to be even faster than my 18 month-old Macbook Pro.


  • #3
    ressem
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,426 ✭✭✭ressem


    I think that those apple laptops will only make use of 3GB of RAM, not the full 4GB. It's a cheap enough and simple upgrade (Remove battery, remove the metal L shaped cover that protects the hard drive and memory, use the levers to eject the old memory chips, add in the new memory chips).

    If upgrading the hard drive, you'll probably also be upgrading the operating system to OS-X Snow-Leopard at the same time (Can't go direct to Lion, and Tiger is being rejected by a number of popular programs now).

    So
    SSD (128 GB for €190, 256 GB for large video files, €360)
    Snow Leopard (€45)
    Memory (€46)
    USB- Sata connector (€10)

    It is a lot quicker than the old setup, great for CS5.
    Whether it's good enough for your video editing depends on what quality of video you are working on. Youtube and fairly low res stuff would be fine, not too limited by storage space and CPU.

    If you are thinking of buying a new machine in the next year anyways, putting in a €70 hard drive + memory + Snow leopard would still give a good speed boost for the time being and make it easier to migrate everything to the new machine.


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