Macbook Pro upgrades instead of a new tower? Hmm.

Revelations Good

A few things have popped up in my small world of sandals, babies and websites. Namely, that OWC makes a 4GB ram chip for my MBP , that solid state drives are faster than hell and almost making financial sense , and that Dell makes a pretty nice 30″ 2560×1600 display for ~a grand (when on sale) .

• 4GB DDR chip $144.
• SSDs are Really. Fucking. Fast. “Prices on SSDs continue to drop. Crucial now has the M225 256G SSD at MSRP of $599.”
• Dell UltraSharp 30″ $1025 on sale, good reviews.

Portability Good

Since deciding I was sick of the performance Achilles’ Heels of my 2.2GHz Macbook Pro and I was pissed and was going to buy or make a really fast tower out of my old Dual G5 that hey, I can’t live without the portability. It’s really fucking nice to run out to a client’s with all my work with me. I’ve done a few training sessions hooked up to a projector “on site” even. If I did get a tower I’d keep this MBP, so the portability I’d keep, but syncing headaches I’d adopt.

Max Ram Bad

The Macbook Pro’s 4GB ram ceiling has been bugging me, and the processor hasn’t gotten any faster in the 21 months since I’ve owned it. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised to read about the OWC 4GB chips that would put me at 6GB ram for $144 (one chip)*. That would allow me to run my web dev suite of apps without hitting the hard drive for swap.

Productivity Good

The overall reason I use a Mac is productivity, and I think my productivity could go up as much or more with these three additions, compared to moving to a tower. If the SSD would make a big difference in speed in everyday use, which it very well may since it’s dozens of times faster than the fastest notebook drive in some duties, I could breathe a bunch of life into my MBP with a 265GB SSD and a 4GB ram chip. The 30″ display is a different animal, and may be left out of the argument, but nevertheless would provide significant increases in productivity. Currently I have a calibrated NEC 20WMGX2 20″ display that’s nice, but cramped.

</thinking out loud>

*Apple officially supports a maximum of 4 GB of RAM but third-parties have been able to upgrade the system to 6 GB of RAM using one 2 GB and one 4 GB memory module. – everymac