Mac RAM and hard drives

rev1976rev1976
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hello everyone,



New to this site so i hope to find a lot of info here. I'm new to the mac world and would like to purchase a Macbook. I've heard a lot of good things about them. I've been using a PC since the beginning of time. My question is how come macbook hard drives and RAM can't compare to the new PC laptops these days. I mean the standard these days for most laptops are 4G RAM and 320G hard drives. Is the RAM and hard drives in a mac different? (ie speed?). I know that i can always upgrade the RAM but i find the HD alittle small. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    futurepastnowfuturepastnow Posts: 1,772member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by rev1976 View Post


    Hello everyone,



    New to this site so i hope to find a lot of info here. I'm new to the mac world and would like to purchase a Macbook. I've heard a lot of good things about them. I've been using a PC since the beginning of time. My question is how come macbook hard drives and RAM can't compare to the new PC laptops these days. I mean the standard these days for most laptops are 4G RAM and 320G hard drives. Is the RAM and hard drives in a mac different? (ie speed?). I know that i can always upgrade the RAM but i find the HD alittle small. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks



    Apple makes a lot of money selling overpriced upgrades. Most smart Mac buyers get RAM and drives elsewhere and install it themselves. Over the last few months Apple has switched all of its computers over to DDR3 memory, which is more expensive, but has come way down in price recently and will continue to do so.



    It does make Macs look bad to people who are "on the fence" about buying them and comparison shopping, but I don't think they're going to change.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Most of the corporate issue Dells I see have about the same specs as the macbook despite actually costing more even after corporate discount. Maybe you can find some sleazy chinese outfit that will sell you a bargain-priced laptop with good specs, but you are not factoring in all of the finer points of the macbook.



    Anyway, I just bought a macbook. If you want to upgrade, go to Other World Computing (macsales.com) and load it up. Then sell your surplus stuff on eBay (make sure to list it as a macbook pull).
  • Reply 3 of 3
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,808member
    RAM is RAM and HDs are HDs. They don't know nor do they care what computer they go into. However, if you get cheap off brand RAM it may not work. The same is also true with a PC. Like Futurepastnot stated, Apple over charges for RAM, but a lot of computer companies do the same. Its best to go to some place like crucial.com to get RAM. As far as HDs go, like I said a HD is a HD. As long as its a 2.5" notebook SATA hard drive it will work. the HD doesn't know, nor does it care what computer it goes into.



    I can understand your frustration with the lack of RAM and HD space, but OS X has different needs than its Windows counterparts. Unless you're doing something heavy duty if you have 4GB of RAM in your MacBook at least 1 GB will be sitting idle constantly.



    HD space, well I guess Apple markets the MacBook as a consumer notebook and reserves the larger HDs for the Pro series. Changing a HD in a MacBook is super easy however, probably easier than most PC notebooks!
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