Since I was recently adding more memory to several MacBooks a friend has, and so had my anti-static mat out, I decided it was time to add some RAM to my MacBook Pro.
Over the years I used various RAM in my computers but tend to prefer Micron (Crucial). They make life really easy on you with a system scanner application (http://www.crucial.com/store/drammemory.aspx) that you download and run. It communicates back to the website and takes you straight to the right page for the memory that works in your machine. I’d order an 8G set last Thursday and it arrived on Monday morning in Australia. Quick install and now a happier Mac. As a bonus the RAM in my MacBook Pro is the same as that in my daughter’s white MacBook. So the 4GB that was in mine went into hers, replacing the 2GB it shipped with. So two upgrades for the price of one. Pretty recent MacBooks make the memory upgrade quite easy. Remove the screws on the back and there are the RAM slots waiting for an upgrade.
On the horizon is an SSD disk drive upgrade, making the boot disk the SSD and the hard drive will move into the optical drive bay. This seems a recommended setup for heavy Lion users. I may up the hard drive to a 750GB 7200rpm drive at the same time. This setup gives you the best of both worlds – system on the solid state drive for fast boots and wake from sleep, swapping, etc and a large pretty fast drive for all my files.
Updating your system is not hard. Some small Philips head screwdrivers and I recommend an anti-static mat, but you can also just earth yourself by touching something like a metal tap that connects to copper pipes. There are videos and step-by-steps you can quickly find through Google for your particular model of computer that will show you exactly what is required. Naturally use common sense and take it slow. And I accept no liability for anything that goes wrong, as I’m sure do the step-by-step tutorial writers. But I have to say that it really is not hard for most people.
While you’ve got the back open gently blow dust out of the machine. I use a rocket blower that I have for my camera gear (big rubber squeeze device that shoots out a decent force of air).