memory

[ben_im]

at work i may have open and switching between photoshop, indesign(sometimes cs1 and 2 and possibly 3 at the same time due to back saving issues), illustrator, acrobat, distiller, preps, prinergy evo, itunes, firefox and also working across servers.

at home i want to import photos, watch movies, dabble in some movie editing, use boot camp to run music recording software, use a wireless interenet connection and all the other basic stuff.

Just wondering if i will be better off paying for 4 gig instead of standard 2 in a macbook pro or would it be over kill?

thanks in advance

 

[cwa107]

at work i may have open and switching between photoshop, indesign(sometimes cs1 and 2 and possibly 3 at the same time due to back saving issues), illustrator, acrobat, distiller, preps, prinergy evo, itunes, firefox and also working across servers.

at home i want to import photos, watch movies, dabble in some movie editing, use boot camp to run music recording software, use a wireless interenet connection and all the other basic stuff.

Just wondering if i will be better off paying for 4 gig instead of standard 2 in a macbook pro or would it be over kill?

thanks in advance

If you're ordering it brand new, I would get it equipped with the least amount of memory possible and then upgrade it later from an aftermarket source like Crucial.com. It's a lot cheaper (sometimes half to a quarter of the price) and then you can have the machine for a little bit and run Activity Monitor to determine how much you actually need instead of speculating.

 

[ben_im]

upgrade it later.

is this fairly painless to do if i need to?

 

[cwa107]

is this fairly painless to do if i need to?

Yes. You just remove a cover on the bottom of your MacBook Pro and plug the memory modules into the two slots beneath it. It's so easy, a drunk monkey can do it

 

[ben_im]

If you're ordering it brand new, I would get it equipped with the least amount of memory possible and then upgrade it later from an aftermarket source like Crucial.com. It's a lot cheaper (sometimes half to a quarter of the price) and then you can have the machine for a little bit and run Activity Monitor to determine how much you actually need instead of speculating.

Yes. You just remove a cover on the bottom of your MacBook Pro and plug the memory modules into the two slots beneath it. It's so easy, a drunk monkey can do it

ah great, I've had a bit of experience with my g4 which i'm using now at work so i should be fine but i wasn't aware macbooks had a similar level of accessibility.

thanks for the advice

 

[Village Idiot]

Yes. You just remove a cover on the bottom of your MacBook Pro and plug the memory modules into the two slots beneath it. It's so easy, a drunk monkey can do it

I'm not a monkey but I was a little drunk the other night when I added the extra gb to my mbp.

Man that was almost a pain. It's sooooo easy but those screws are tiny. The threads don't even look long enough to screw into anything. I just had trouble with the last one. Other than that, I probably could have been absolutely trashed and did it. I think the hardest part was getting the bottom half of the Speck case off of it.


Ben im - Pretty much all modern notebooks are going to have extremely easy to access RAM slots and hard drives. You would need a dinosaur for something that's difficult to get to. I'm not sure if it was Toshiba or another brand, but you had to go through the keyboard to swap out the ram on it.

 

[melow71]

yea it is easy, newegg.com best place for price

 

[Title27GT]

at work i may have open and switching between photoshop, indesign(sometimes cs1 and 2 and possibly 3 at the same time due to back saving issues), illustrator, acrobat, distiller, preps, prinergy evo, itunes, firefox and also working across servers.

at home i want to import photos, watch movies, dabble in some movie editing, use boot camp to run music recording software, use a wireless interenet connection and all the other basic stuff.

Just wondering if i will be better off paying for 4 gig instead of standard 2 in a macbook pro or would it be over kill?

thanks in advance

With what you're going to do...trust me....2 gigs is already much more than you need. In fact, I would reccomend a MacBook Black but you've apparently made your decision already. 4 gigs is more than what most power users need. Don't overkill.

 

[ben_im]

With what you're going to do...trust me....2 gigs is already much more than you need. In fact, I would reccomend a MacBook Black but you've apparently made your decision already. 4 gigs is more than what most power users need. Don't overkill.

my work is going to help me out with the cost so i figure i'll get a mac book pro, just because i can really.

i'd rather the pro due to the pure fact it i want to do some film rendering and protools with lots of effects later on i can, i'd like to dabble in it now but the G4 is only works computer and my home pc is getting a bit over the hill plus i just get enraged when using it, ha ha.

thanks also for the advice guys, i'm not going to bother with 4 gig anymore.

 

[alaceo]

With what you're going to do...trust me....2 gigs is already much more than you need. In fact, I would reccomend a MacBook Black but you've apparently made your decision already. 4 gigs is more than what most power users need. Don't overkill.

Title27GT,
I think the MBP is the wiser choice here for the high amounts of graphic work he'll be doing, especially if he's interested in video editing. Macbooks will limit him to certain programs (iMovie, FCP Express), and the CPU will be doing more work due to utilizing the Intel integrated graphics. And with the MBP he'll get a bigger workspace, higher ram topout, nVidia video card, etc.
Just seems like a win

ben_im,
With that much going at once, if you want to keep your workflow streamlined and not abuse the RAM too much, 4gig wouldn't be too bad of an idea. I have 2gig myself and can run Photoshop CS2, Firefox, Safari, Adium, iTunes, and Smultron all at once and still not drain a whole lot, so I'm sure it'd do okay. However, I know how big of a resource hog Acrobat can be (at least the PC version was for me a year or two ago), and with that many graphic editors running you could probably use an extra boost.

If you do decide for 4GBs in the future, make sure to look around for the best deals.

Enjoy the MBP!

 

[chiffonhead]

I have a question related to this and I know it may sound a little dumb, but I've never really understood the whole RAM/memory/GB thing. anyway, below are the stats of what my computer has and it seems low to me. I mainly use my computer for photos, iTunes (which is really large) and surfing and the occasional PS work. I'm scared I'm running out of room and I woud like to speed up my MacBook if possible.

under preferences it says:

Processor: 2GHz
Memory: 1.5GB

when I click on my drive it says I have 17.48GB available.

so, my question is...are those fairly average specs or is there something I should be aware of as far as room/space/speed/performance? thanks.

 

[Title27GT]

I have a question related to this and I know it may sound a little dumb, but I've never really understood the whole RAM/memory/GB thing. anyway, below are the stats of what my computer has and it seems low to me. I mainly use my computer for photos, iTunes (which is really large) and surfing and the occasional PS work. I'm scared I'm running out of room and I woud like to speed up my MacBook if possible.

under preferences it says:

Processor: 2GHz
Memory: 1.5GB

when I click on my drive it says I have 17.48GB available.

so, my question is...are those fairly average specs or is there something I should be aware of as far as room/space/speed/performance? thanks.

Those are fine!
Very good for what you need to do, in fact.

 

[killedbyinterne]

I have a question related to this and I know it may sound a little dumb, but I've never really understood the whole RAM/memory/GB thing. anyway, below are the stats of what my computer has and it seems low to me. I mainly use my computer for photos, iTunes (which is really large) and surfing and the occasional PS work. I'm scared I'm running out of room and I woud like to speed up my MacBook if possible.

under preferences it says:

Processor: 2GHz
Memory: 1.5GB

when I click on my drive it says I have 17.48GB available.

so, my question is...are those fairly average specs or is there something I should be aware of as far as room/space/speed/performance? thanks.

I think the "17.48 GB available" actually means you're running out of room on your hard drive which has nothing to do with your processor or memory. Since your hard drive is so bogged down it might be causing slow performance.

 

[cwa107]

I have a question related to this and I know it may sound a little dumb, but I've never really understood the whole RAM/memory/GB thing. anyway, below are the stats of what my computer has and it seems low to me. I mainly use my computer for photos, iTunes (which is really large) and surfing and the occasional PS work. I'm scared I'm running out of room and I woud like to speed up my MacBook if possible.

under preferences it says:

Processor: 2GHz
Memory: 1.5GB

when I click on my drive it says I have 17.48GB available.

so, my question is...are those fairly average specs or is there something I should be aware of as far as room/space/speed/performance? thanks.

It might help to understand what those numbers actually represent.

Your CPU (processor) is rated in GHz (gigahertz), that is the "clock" speed at which the processor can process data. Generally, the higher the number, the faster the CPU - although in recent years, CPU manufacturers have started to use other criteria to rate the performance of their CPUs.

Memory (RAM) is the area that programs need to be moved to in order for the CPU to actually run the program. It is rated in terms of either megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). There are 1024 MB in 1GB. So, if you have 1.5GB of memory, you actually have 1536MB of memory.

Your hard drive is where the data, programs and Operating System installed on your computer are stored. The size of your hard drive is rated in terms of capacity. Most modern computers have at least a 60GB hard drive. In your case, I can't tell how large your hard drive is, but I know that you have over 17GB of free space, which is fairly significant. To put it into terms you might be familiar with, the average 2 hour movie takes about 8GB of space. An average song (MP3) takes about 5MB (remember, 1024MB in 1GB, so you could theoretically store approximately 3400 songs in that space).

Does that make sense?

 

[Sandwichman]

<snip> To put it into terms you might be familiar with, the average 2 hour movie takes about 8GB of space. <snip>

Excellent post, but I'm going to go ahead and disagree with the line I quoted above. A movie that length will be about 1.5GB when encoded (the raw video is much bigger, which may be where the "8GB" came from).

 

[cwa107]

Excellent post, but I'm going to go ahead and disagree with the line I quoted above. A movie that length will be about 1.5GB when encoded (the raw video is much bigger, which may be where the "8GB" came from).

I'm going by a commercial DVD. Most DVDs are around 8GB although they can be compressed.

 

[Sandwichman]

Right. My mistake.