[MacMan05]

Happy Halloween...

I'm thinking of buying the current 15" PowerBook and was wondering if I get 512MB DDR2 RAM and the 100GB 7200 RPM hard drive, will I still have great performance? Or should I up the Ram to 1GB?

[PB PM]

Well you'll always have better preformance with more RAM, but that depends on what your using the Powerbook for, as always.

[jondaapplegeek]

i got 1GB with my powerbook (the previous G4), and deff don't regret it - I wouldn't want to pay that amount of money, and not the little extra to get that better performance.

[MacMan05]

You think the extra $200 for the 100GB 7200 RPM drive over the 80 GB 5400 RPM drive is a waste?

[PB PM]

Don't get the RAM from Apple, it will save you money, $50-60 less most likely.

[MacMan05]

What's your opinion on the 7200 rpm drive? Worth it?

[PB PM]

Don't have a clue, I think the 4200 rmp drive on my ibook G4 is fine, so I'd think the 120GB 5400 rmp would be a good choice, since it costs the same amount as the faster drive, but gives you more room to work with.

[greenleaf]

The ram depends on what you are using your PB for, if you plan on have multiple apps. open at the same time extra ram is very helpful, especially for how cheap you can find it for, I just got the new PB and order 1 GB of ram from crucial, for $125 (512mb is about $60) I think $60-125 is well worth the increased performance.

[Franz Josef]

Running Tiger, you'll almost certainly notice the difference between 512 MB and 1 GB of RAM so I would strongly recommend going for the latter.

Re harddrives, more is always better but faster isn't necessarily of huge benefit - the speed increase of a 7200 v 5400 rpm will probably only be noticeable on boot-up, unless you run very data intensive apps which require lots of HD access. I'd have thought a 80GB 5400 rpm drive is probably fine.

[Elysium]

Yeah go for the 1 GB and buy from Crucial (I've had a great track record with purchasing from them) if you feel up to the task of installing it yourself. Also, get the 5400 rpm drive as you gain more with the added storage than with just a small speed increase.

Maybe we could get one of the mods to move this over to Purchasing Advice too, that should give you plenty of feedback.

[greenleaf]

a site to check out is www.barefeats.com, there are some good tests of HDs.

[Aleman]

I just got one of the new 15 inch PB's and noticed a pretty nice speed boost across the board when I popped in another 512 MB of DDR2 RAM (bought Corsair Value Select PC4200 from Newegg.com for $50). It especially helps when I have Photoshop + Safari + Word + Excel open at the same time. Expose also seems to be zippier with the extra RAM, and the Dashboard loads slightly faster.

I had a 7200 rpm hard drive in my old Thinkpad (Windows) notebook and the speed boost was pretty noticeable when booting up and moving/saving large amounts of data. It also helped game load times. Not sure how much Tiger would benefit from the 7200 rpm drive, but the 80 gig 5400 RPM in my Powerbook feels just right.

I would personally buy more HDD capacity over speed for the money.

[euain]

Originally Posted by MacMan05 Happy Halloween... I'm thinking of buying the current 15" PowerBook and was wondering if I get 512MB DDR2 RAM and the 100GB 7200 RPM hard drive, will I still have great performance? Or should I up the Ram to 1GB?

I'd go the HD. You can (and probably will) increase the RAM at some point. This is an easy task to do yourself and doesn't void your warranty etc. It is also a lot cheaper from someone other than Apple.

Changing the HD is another level of complexity so, unless you are a dab hand at upgrading notebooks, you are stuck with the HD you buy it with.

Euain

[Luca]

Rumor has it that you're purchasing a new PowerBook and want advice on the RAM. Oh wait, that's not a rumor, that's real!

Moving to Purchasing Advice

[MacMan05]

You got me...I'm awaiting the arrival of my new 15" PB tomorrow and i'm pretty excited about it. I got it with 512 MB ram and 100 GB 7200 rpm drive. Apple even knocked off $100 off the total. The extra 512 MB RAM i'll get from CRUCIAL.

Originally Posted by Aleman I just got one of the new 15 inch PB's and noticed a pretty nice speed boost across the board when I popped in another 512 MB of DDR2 RAM (bought Corsair Value Select PC4200 from Newegg.com for $50).

The RAM you bought is I uess 533Mhz DDR2 RAM. Does it work fine in your powerbook?

The RAM that came with it is 444Mhz DDR2.

I bought a Corsaid 1GB SODIMM, and I've had a lot of crashes recently. I'm wondering if it's the RAM.

JY

[Brad]

Faster RAM should scale down without any problems.