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atharkhan's avatar

MacBook Upgrade Opinion?

Asked by atharkhan (701points) | asked May 31st, 2009 | 7 responses | “Great Question” (0points) | Flag as…

I have a White, Late 2006 Macbook Core Duo notebook. It has a 2.0Ghz CPU, 1GB of RAM, and 60GB of HDD. And, I need a new battery.

I am thinking of purchasing a new battery, and installing the maximum RAM and HDD it can accept.

Here are my questions for the collective:

1) Battery: Would you purchase an Apple Battery? Or, would you prefer a 3rd party battery that may be cheaper and last longer (because of greater capacity).

2) RAM: I am getting conflicting information about RAM. Crucial, OWC, and NewEgg say that this system can accept only 2GB of 200 Pin, DDR2–667, PC2–5300 SODIMMs. However, several blogs report that they have made 4GB work successfully. Which source would you trust? Which memory would you purchase?

3) Hard Drive: There are bunch of Hard Drive manufacturers, speeds, and capacities. Do you have one that you recommend over others? I haven’t really kept up with hard drive manufacturers so I don’t know which model will run cooler, be less susceptible to failures, etc.

Thank you so much for your help!

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Answers

philo23's avatar

The white Macbook’s only support 2GB of RAM maximum, and i would recommend Crucial for it.

Personally i’d recommend an apple battery, but i’ve never upgraded my Macbook’s battery.

philo23 (185points)“Great Answer” (1points) Flag as…
andrew's avatar

I’d go with 2GB, or at least see what apple’s site has to say.

richardhenry asked a hard drive question just the other day.

We purchased apple batteries off of ebay to extend the life. I’m not a big fan of third party anything these days.

andrew (10753points)“Great Answer” (1points) Flag as…
atharkhan's avatar

Okay. I’ll stick with 2GB of Crucial RAM and a MacBook battery. How about the harddrives? Any recommendations?

By the way, did you know that if you go to the Apple store, you can buy a battery for $129 at the counter or $99 at the Genius bar?! The difference is that the Genius bar battery has a 3 month warranty and they insist that you should buy the one at the retail counter (within the same store) because that has a 1 year warranty. That just seems strange to me.

atharkhan (701points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…
drClaw's avatar

It is not possible to do 4 gigs, you can use a hack to get it up to 3 gigs, but the risk outweighs the reward. I upgraded to 2 gigs using Samsung’s RAM and it was plenty for me to run Parallels, browser, Photoshop and Flash together with no noticeable slowdowns.

drClaw (2177points)“Great Answer” (1points) Flag as…
atharkhan's avatar

@drClaw Thank you! Now, I know not to mess with the RAM. I won’t go higher than 2GB. Do you have any Hard Drive recommendations?

atharkhan (701points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…
bonus's avatar

RAM. I dealt with this a few months back. Ask the “geniuses” over at MAC what they determine you can use. Also, make sure you have them describe as articulately as possible the exact specs for you. I am almost dead certain you do not have more capacity than 2gb as I have the more recent Macbook Pro and it can only handle 4gb (which is very disappointing). I found mine online via OWC and then found it for WAY cheaper on Amazon. In the end, I got 4gb of RAM for $30 (with a mail-in rebate, etc.) as opposed to Apple setting me up for over $300. Frankly, I am not an Apple fan because it is such a rip-off.

bonus (531points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…
drClaw's avatar

I haven’t done the hd yet, but anytime I do an upgrade on my mac I lean toward using parts manufactured by mac approved companies (ie Samsung, Intel, etc.).

drClaw (2177points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…

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