Mac Book + 2 x 256 MB DIMMS = OS X??

I'm almost tempted to go over to the Dark Side with the advent of the MacBook (arguably, Apple's 1st combination of true performance and budget) BootCamp, and Ubuntu - my personal holy trinity. I can triple-boot and have dual-core performance (not Core 2, alas) for under $1000!!! However, two things bug me about the MacBook. For a 13" notebook, it's darn heavy (5.2 lbs) - I can live with that. The next gripe is (in typical Apple marketing fashion) -- 512 MB of RAM in 2 256 MB chips!? First, WHEN, not if, I upgrade my memory, I have 2 almost worthless 256 MB DIMMS. Then, I have to buy and install my own RAM (it's s'posed to be easy on the MacBook, at least). I can customize the MacBook from scratch at apple.com, but it's $100 more expensive there. The cheaper retail joints don't seem to have customizeable configurations.

I'm prolly going to do it. I'm prolly going to hate myself.

 

I enjoy my MacBook a lot, and I was in the same boat as you on the Apples 1st combination of true performance and budget arguement, I waited years for Apples consumer notebook to get the right combination of things I wanted, and the wait was well worth it. 5.2lbs is really not that much.

Make sure you keep those ram modules, because you'll need to put them back in if you ever have to send it in for some reason.

 

Yeah, 2x 256 is silly. I'd probably go ahead and pay for 1x512 (i doubt the cost is much.
It's a pretty sweet notebook man. Hey, you may even start to like OS X. I actually find it fun to use now.
Though, that 100 gigs of space is going fast hehehe....

 

They had to go with 2x256 MB rather than 1x512 because the Intel 950 chipset has twice the memory bandwidth when running with two banks of RAM. 1x512 would have given people a slower machine.

 

Historically one of the reasons Apple kept stock RAM configurations lower than normal was so that resellers could make more of a profit by selling a RAM upgrade (and sometimes installation services) alongside a new Mac.

This probably isn't as much of a reason as it used to be though.

-Zadillo

 

AlanY - good info to have. But I just realized that I forgot to ask one of the questions I had meant to ask. Is 512 MB enough to run OS X well?

 

It depends what you're doing, really. If you're just running a few apps at a time, and especially if you're only going to be running Intel-native apps, 512 megs might be enough to get by. But almost everyone's experience is that upgrading the RAM to 2GB has a pretty significant impact on performance. This is especially true if you are running any PowerPC-only apps, because OS X's "Rosetta" technology (which allows PowerPC code to run on Intel) uses a lot of memory.

OS X will still run and you'd still be able to launch apps, but with only 512 megs you'd probably notice more pauses, etc.

-Zadillo

 

Yes, 512mb is quite enough to run 10.4 well. Though deduct whatever the graphics chip will grab for its usage of course.

10.4 requires 256, I run it with 512 on a G4 Mac Mini and it's fine most of the time. I multitask more than most do I think, and it works for me. Not saying I wouldn't be happier with 1GB though ;P

I'd always recommend 1GB for any computer these days really, no matter what operating system or what you want to use it for except a pure websurfing/wordprocessing computer.

 

Good point, I forgot to factor in the shared video memory on a regular MacBook. Even more reason to need to upgrade.

I can see 512 meg being enough on a G4 Mac mini, but I think the big issue here again would be the Rosetta memory requirements on an Intel-based Mac, requiring a fair chunk of memory for any non-Intel native apps he'd be running.

 

512 mg is cool for me except for ms word 2004 (which, i think, is not universal and uses rossetta)

 

Yup, that's correct. Word 2004 wasn't exactly a speed demon even on PowerPC anyway, and using Rosetta emulation, Word + Rosetta will take up a fair amount of memory. 512 megs only with Word 2004 is definitely pushing things.