What to do with 4GB of RAM

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Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Pro 13", 2.26 GHz, 2GB, 160GB. iPod touch 2nd gen, 8GB, 27" Core i7, 8GB, 1TB iMac
OK - I have been thinking about the best way to go about upgrading my Macs.

I have a 2009 13" MacBook Pro, with 2GB Ram, 160GB HDD and the Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.66 GHz, so all standard spec.

I also have the 2010 27" iMac with 4GB Ram, Intel Core i7 processor and 1TB HDD.

The plan is to upgrade the MBP to 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SDD, and the iMac to 8GB Ram, and eventually 16GB Ram.

I have bought 4GB of RAM from Crucial, since it was only £35, and now have 2 options. I could either boost the RAM in the MBP to 4GB and move the spare 2GB RAM to the iMac, giving the iMac 6GB Ram opposed to 4, or I could double the RAM in the iMac to 8GB and leave the MBP for about 6 weeks until I buy the RAM and the SSD.

The iMac is the workhorse. I keep it at the office, and use Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign on it, a lot. The MBP is mainly used for coding, as I tend to do this in the evening, so often is running Komodo Edit, FileZilla and Firefox 4 (with Web Dev toolbar and Firebug).

So really - it comes down to this. Target in 6 weeks time - iMac has 8GB Ram, MBP has 8GB Ram and 256GB SSD. Right now I have 4GB of RAM, and in 6 weeks I'll get another 4GB of RAM and the SSD. Any suggestions on what to upgrade in what order? Or am I thinking into this too much.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
2019 iMac 27"; 2020 M1 MacBook Air; macOS up-to-date... always.
OK - I have been thinking about the best way to go about upgrading my Macs.

I have a 2009 13" MacBook Pro, with 2GB Ram, 160GB HDD and the Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.66 GHz, so all standard spec.

I also have the 2010 27" iMac with 4GB Ram, Intel Core i7 processor and 1TB HDD.

The plan is to upgrade the MBP to 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SDD, and the iMac to 8GB Ram, and eventually 16GB Ram.

I have bought 4GB of RAM from Crucial, since it was only £35, and now have 2 options. I could either boost the RAM in the MBP to 4GB and move the spare 2GB RAM to the iMac, giving the iMac 6GB Ram opposed to 4, or I could double the RAM in the iMac to 8GB and leave the MBP for about 6 weeks until I buy the RAM and the SSD..

Whoa whoa whoa! Hold on chief… those two computers don't even use the same RAM. Specs from EveryMac for your iMac:

PC3-10600 DDR3
Min. RAM Speed: 1333 MHz
Details: Supports 1333 MHz PC3-10600 DDR3 SO-DIMMs.

For your MacBook:

PC3-8500 DDR3
Min. RAM Speed: 1066 MHz
Details: Supports 1066 MHz PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM.

It's also not generally recommended to mix/match RAM from different makes. Sometimes, even with identical specs, there can be subtle incompatibilities between them that lead to system instability. You might be fine… Crucial does make good sticks, but be aware.
 
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^That. But upgrade whatever first whatever machine you feel needs it the most? That's waht I would do as it seems like it would make the most sense. It's your work computer, are you waiting maybe a second tops for things to open and just want to make it faster? Or is it bogged down to a noticeable slower speed and you think you need improvements? If it's the latter, go ahead and get the right RAM.

For what I do, I couldn't see me needing more than 4gb of RAM in my blackbook; I do regular school work, HD video (playback), some light gaming, and light photo editing along with anything you can do online. I also run virtual machines from time to time with Parallels and I don't ever really get any lag at all.

You can't really "try out" RAM on a computer and take it back if you don't like it (right?) so if 8gbs for the MBP is too much, don't feel too bad about getting 4 or 6, that should be plenty.
 

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