So my 2 gigs of RAM from Newegg came in the other day and I immediately went about disassembling the Macbook in order to get to the actual RAM housing. First, you have to use some kind of coin or rounded object (I used one of those smashed pennies that you get from a theme park) to turn a dial on the lower portion of the Macbook's case to pop open the battery bay. After removing the battery, there is an extremely thin metal "bar" that has three tiny, and I mean TINY screws that you must remove to get to the RAM inside. (I tried to use a little screwdriver from a glasses repairing kit, but I could not get enough grip on the small handle to budge them.) The actual RAM is easy to remove and install, as there is a small lever for each slot (2) that pushes that RAM out. Pressing the new RAM into place scared me a little bit, as I had to push a little harder than I would like to get the pieces into place, but the reassembly was not very difficult (with the right screwdriver) and I was up and running in no time.
After I booted up the system I went to "About This Mac" to make sure the RAM was being recognized and thankfully, it was. I had seen a video on YouTube of a Macbook starting all of the applications in its Dock at once and I wanted to try. Here is the list of all the programs that I began to execute as a test for the new RAM:
- Apple Mail
- Xcode
- Google Earth
- iChat
- ITunes
- FireFox
- Address book
- iPhoto
- iMovie HD
- iDVD
- Garageband
- iWeb
- iCal
- System Preferences
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft Entourage
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Excel
- DVD Player
- MacTheRipper
- Burn
- SpeedTools Utilities
Even though I had these 22 programs running, the CPU was only working at 70% of its capabilities! I was simply amazed! I had never, in my life seen that many major programs run at the same time, and yet the Macbook's 2 GHZ CPU still had room to breathe, and the RAM was not completely maxed out either! I believe I still had around another 100 MBs of usable RAM for other processes. Insane!
Heya, great videos on youtube, very useful - I'm just about to buy a macbook and your vids really helped answer some of the lingering doubts - cheers!
ReplyDeleteAbout the 2GB of RAM, now you have it do you think it's simply a great addition *if* you can afford it, or does it make using the macbook substantially better - i.e is it a 'must have'?
I'm a freelancer in IT and want to be running photoshop, textmate, firefox and preferably thunderbird/mail in the background, from your experience is 1Gb enough to cover that or is it going to slow to a crawl? obviously I'll upgrade to 2Gb in time, but I'd prefer to wait a few months to spread out the finance!!
many thanks again dude!
That's amazing, I can not wait to get my MacBook :).
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