Well just picked up our five year old MacBook from the apple

[nadinbrzezinski]

Folks.

One of the independent service providers.

It needed a new drive... After five years I had less than 10% of the drive left. So put the max drive on it and expanded RAM to max. Right now loading the OS and time machine is next. Hubby will have a working machine for school.

Oh and this is one of those times I am happy to be a geek. The price to have them do it was down right insane.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. And a few hours later

I only need to set up my IPAD but it is done.

And yes it does feel snappier

[struggle4progress]

2. You changed out the hdd and swapped the ram yourself, right?

I don't know why, but I have some impression from somewhere that apple is making the upgrades more difficult of late

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Nope, I went to a service provider

cry wolf...

Did not feel like having two weeks of no machine.

When it comes to Laptops I just don't do that

[struggle4progress]

4. Might depend on the particular macbook, but upgrading ram and hdd can be very easy

for some models: take off battery, open hatch in back, pull hdd out, put hdd in, loosen two or three screws, pull off metal L, pull out ram, put ram in, put on metal L, tighten two or three screws, close hatch in back, put battery in, done. Twenty minutes tops for the white macbook I have

Dunno about other models though; I guess I might let a pro handle one with aluminum unibody

[emulatorloo]

5. From what I can tell it is getting easier to replace the drives in the newer macbook pros

Just going by the installation videos at http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/index.cfm

That is a pretty good place for the do-it-yourselfer by the way - always clear how to videos and documentation.