About a week ago I bought myself a new laptop, a Macbook Aluminum 13”; 2.4 GHz dual core, 2 GB memory and a 250 GB 5400 rpm disk. The reason for this “investment” was simple; my current work laptop did not perform well enough anymore.
I’ve been a Mac user since April 2008, when I bought the iMac, and ever since I’ve been impressed by the whole “Apple” experience. I have no performance issue anymore, backup is smooth using Time Machine, it’s user friendly, responsive etc.
Anyway, the reason for this post is to share my experience from upgrading my Macbook Aluminum.
Upgrades
Since the memory upgrades from Apple store are so expensive, I decided to buy it elsewhere and install it myself. I started out researching which kind of memory I could install in this laptop, and after a bit of research on various Apple/Mac forums I decided to buy 2 x Kingston ValueR DRR3 SO-DIM 1066 Mhz (KVR1066D3S7/2G). I bought the memory here.
I followed this instruction while upgrading the Macbook.
I also decided to install a SSD (Solid State Disk) hard drive, because I was curious about the performance. On my quest to find the right hardware I started out reading performance tests on SSD disks from various websites including these; tomshardware.com and hardware.no. I decided to go for the Intel X25 80GB SATA2 disk. I ordered it form here.
The difference
The first thing I noticed after the disk upgrade was faster a faster system boot. And after using the laptop for a while I also noticed that the familiar hard drive noise was gone, and the heating with it. So not only did I get a faster computer, I got a more silent one. I’m not sure what impact this upgrade has on the battery life, but my guess is minimal.
The test
Since my friend a neighbor Geir Olav recently bought the same Macbook as me (2.4 GHz, 4GB RAM), I decided to invite him over to do some performance testing.
We put the laptops side by side without any power outlet connected. The hardware is exactly the same, except from the SSD disk in my Macbook. In the video below you see both of our laptops booting side by side. My Macbook is the one to the left.
The boot time was:
- Macbook with SSD hard drive; 26 seconds
- Macbook with the standard hard drive; 38 seconds
This is not an extensive test in performance, but it’s a fun one. We also noticed that the one with the SSD also launched the applications faster.
Conclusion
From now on I’m only going to by computers with a SSD disk installed. It’s faster, silent and there is no heating problem.
I’ll guess this my biggest contribution to the financial crisis – for now.