My MacBook Pro Upgrade Blog

Rameses

Rameses

Rameses

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
8,453
Well not yet, but thought I'd give heads up on my little upgrade planned for tomorrow (or today as it is). I have 4GB to install, a 320GB Scorpio HDD complete with fresh OSX install and iWork 09 / iLife 09 which arrived a few days ago.

Hope to take some nice shots for all who may be interested. Never really 'upgraded' a laptop before so kinda looking forward to it.

Anyways check bater laterz for pictures etc.

:)
 
I was thinking of getting that hard drive for my unibody macbook, interesting to see the effect of battery life - especially with the extra 2gb which I am also thinking of doing :D
 
I done exactly the same upgrade to my Macbook Pro and was pretty much easy with no problems. The 320GB Scorpio drive is lovely ;) and with 4GB it fly's nows.
 
You ordered a new MBP without any factory upgrades, so you could do it yourself?

I thought the Apple upgrades are a lot more reasonable these days :confused:
 
They are, so when I order my laptop I'll be getting the memory pre-fitted but there are limited hard drive upgrade options from Apple. Hence I'll be doing the same as AmTechFox and replacing the hard drive straight away with, funnily enough, the same model :)
 
Feek said:
They are, so when I order my laptop I'll be getting the memory pre-fitted but there are limited hard drive upgrade options from Apple. Hence I'll be doing the same as AmTechFox and replacing the hard drive straight away with, funnily enough, the same model :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had mine pre-fitted.

What's this hard drive then (I assume an uber performer).. I find my 320GB drive fine :o:)
 
I got all my upgrades from Apple aswell. It automatically had 4GB of RAM but i got the 320GB HDD which is great! The 2.8GHz processor is great also!
 
EVH said:
What's this hard drive then (I assume an uber performer).. I find my 320GB drive fine :o:)
Click to expand...

Just a 7200rpm WD rather than the 5400rpm jobbie that comes with the Macbook. I asked about it here and there are some benchmarks linked.

You know what I'm like, I want uber performance and will play with things to make them work faster. I'm sure there's no real need but I'm a tinkerer.
 
EVH said:
I thought the Apple upgrades are a lot more reasonable these days :confused:
Click to expand...

They were until the memory prices dropped :p

It costs £98 for a 4GB memory upgrade from Apple in comparison to £53 for a Crucial 4GB memory kit :p

It costs £103 for a 320GB 7200RPM hard drive upgrade from Apple in comparison to £65 for a Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM hard drive :p

These Apple prices are for the 2.4GHz MacBook Pro model. These upgrades saves you approximately £85 and you get to keep the components you've replaced or sell them to help cover the costs of the upgrades therefore making it even cheaper :p
 
As Cybertronic states! + I'll have those components from the MBP on eBay sunday night to get some green back!

Not started yet, I errr slept in! Currenty typing to you all in just my boxers! Just had a shower & time for my breakfast :p Then I'll start!

wh00p.

Yes, I did buy it from MM - Frank Butcher to be precise!
 
Right well, where did I start?

Never start a job without tools, it simply isn't a good thing!

#00 Phillips screwdriver was required, which a kind neighbour helped me out with! I actually struggled for 15 minutes with one of those screwdrivers you get out of xmas crackers! :o

Anyway, its beautiful inside, once I got the back cover off.

All went splendid, except I couldn't get the HDD studs that occupy the sides of the old HDD which help fix it to the laptop. I ended up (for the time being) using 4-5mm cuts of a straw so it would fix and lock into place! :p It actually needed a torex screwdriver to remove them.

Switched on, installed OSX / iLife & iWork 09!

Nice little experience, the memory wasn't hard to do, the screws provided the most challenging part of the project but once in it was a case of remove top memory chip remove the bottom and replace but there isnt much room to breath in my opinion!. Suprised to see just how small the 2.5mm HDD's are, it looks like the WD Scorpio is 1 or 2m smaller as well!

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Other random pics here: My Gallery

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Xbench Results Although I didn't do one before I upgraded.

Innit.
 
I came back into here to find out what size torx driver you used, only to be sadly let down when I noticed that you didn't, and used pieces of straw instead!
 
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