NEW MacBook owner & Forum user (+ memory query)

Hey guys!! As you may notice, I am kinda new on the forums so thought I'd begin with a big HEYA!

Now that's over and done with let me run down my situation (the boring part you may say, and you're so right). After much nagging to my dad he agreed to upgrade my 'dated" (words I used to sell the idea to my parents, but I truly know Macs are virtually timeless) eMac [1.42GHz,80GB,256mb] for a glossy new MacBook [white,13",2.2GHz,120GB,1GB] with Leopard OS. As you can all imagine I am pretty hyped and am itching for it to arrive (expected Monday... feels like a lifetime).

Anyway, as a (ex)graphic student I am familiarized with the eMac (and iMac alike) and the Tiger OS. But was wondering if anyone had any basic hints and tips for the first MacBook, and Leopard, owner.

Furthermore I am anxious to upgrade the notebook memory from 1GB with an extra card to 2GB. I have done my research into the process of doing this myself and have found crucial.com to be most competitive - however will this process void my new apple warranty?

Many thanks guys, and I with my addictive personality will no doubt become a regular to these pages!

Chris

Hey Chris,
Welcome to Mac-Forums. In short no, you won't void your warranty. Also, the search button at the top of the forum should help you find lots of relevant threads on memory that can help answer your questions.

Thank you, sorry didn't mean to "spam"... just letting my presence known you may say.

Another question -
With one of Leopards main new features being Time Machine I am aware you require an external hard drive for this capability. However with a noteback spending majority of its time on the move it is virtually impossible to keep a ext hard drive plugged in during the hourly backups (mentioned on the Leopard promo movie). How would this work? And what is the recommended minimum capacity for such external device?

Hey prettyinpunk. Welcome to Mac-Forums.

As schweb pointed out, adding RAM yourself does not void the warranty on your Mac, it is part of what Apple used to call User Installable Parts but what is now known as Do It Yourself Parts.

I'm still on OS X 10.4.11 Tiger so really can't get into Leopard details too much but for the external hard drive size I would imagine the basic logic still applies here: bare minimum would be at the very least twice the size of your internal hard drive. If you can afford more than twice the size, by all means, go for it.

As for the inner workings of Time Machine, I will let others jump in here and give you more info.

prettyinpunk said:

Thank you, sorry didn't mean to "spam"... just letting my presence known you may say.

Another question -
With one of Leopards main new features being Time Machine I am aware you require an external hard drive for this capability. However with a noteback spending majority of its time on the move it is virtually impossible to keep a ext hard drive plugged in during the hourly backups (mentioned on the Leopard promo movie). How would this work? And what is the recommended minimum capacity for such external device?

Click to expand...

No, definitely not spamming, no worries there.

As for Time Machine, it's built to sync whenever you plug your notebook back in...Apple planned for that. From the Apple Time Machine site:

Ready when you are.
When your mobile Mac is connected to your backup drive, Time Machine works as you’d expect. When it isn’t connected, Time Machine also works as you’d expect. It keeps track of which files have changed since the last backup and backs them up to your backup drive the next time you connect. On any Mac, if Time Machine is unable to perform a backup, that’s duly noted in its preferences pane.

Click to expand...

As for size of the external disk, I'd say rule of thumb is to try and go around double the size of your internal drive if you just want to use it for Time Machine.

There have also been a lot of discussions on which drives are best and whether to go firewire vs USB2 (firewire for sure is the winner) if you do a quick search or check out the Other Peripherals forum to point you in the right direction.