1 gb or 2 gb of ram?

i was planning on buying an 13.3 macbook from the university bookstore at UCLA, but they only offer macbooks with a 1 gb configuration.

i was wondering if i would notice any significant decrease in performance as opposed to a macbook with 2gb of ram?

the most ill be doing with the macbook is probably surfing, editing pictures and movies. Will the extra 1gb of ram make a big difference?

is it possible to upgrade the ram of the macbook if i bring it into an apple store?

thanks.

 

yes 2gb is worth it if you have the money. just dont buy it from the re-saler, get it from somewhere like newegg. the apple stores wont do it (unless you have a problem like me where i thoughy there was something wrong with the ram mechanism, but thats another story), but i think compusa can do it, or maybe an apple technitian at your school.

==edit==

i had some bad wording. i meant do buy it from an online store like newegg. thanks to jrsryder for pointing that out to me.

 

It's absolutely fine for you to be running Leopard on 1 gb of RAM, but I would suggest going for 2 gb since RAM is so cheap these days. Buy a Macbook with the standard 1 gb configuration and upgrade it yourself with 1 gb x 1gb. It's pretty easy and there are instructional videos up on YouTube. Don't buy from Apple since they overcharge you on RAM.

 

Yeah they do. ALthough i bought my memory from apple the other day at te apple store when i bought this macbook and the did charge alot. Do i regret it? Not really. And yeah 2 gigs kicks ass.

 

I'd say 2GB is worth it. But not worth Apple retail price. Get the 1GB, go to newegg, and spend like $20 on 2 1GB sticks instead of like $150 to upgrade.

 

2Gb is a minimum for me these days, especially with how cheap RAM is. I just upgraded to 4Gb on my MBP last week. Only $79.99 for 2x2Gb off Newegg. A few months ago that would have easily cost over $200. It's crazy how fast the prices drop on computer components (RAM especially).

I've noticed quite a different going from 2Gb to 4Gb and I'm a fairly "typical" computer user. iTunes is always running, Photoshop CS3, Safari, iWork, Cyberduck, Mail, iCal, and VMWare Fusion (sometimes) is usually what's open (plus all the other little widgets running in the background and other processes like Connect 360, Bytecontroller, etc.).

I've noticed Safari and iTunes have memory leak issues as well (Safari being the most severe) so increasing the RAM is one way to combat that, lol.

 

Well, the MacBook will run Mac OS X Leopard fine on 1 GB of RAM, but editing photos with Photoshop and such, 2 GB of RAM will help. Since RAM is so cheap nowadays, I'd definitely go for 2 GB.

And as others noted, upgrade the RAM yourself, it'll be cheaper .

 

thanks for all the help guys, but what kind of ram does the macbook use?

any links on newegg? thanks

 

The MacBook uses 200-pin PC5300/5400 DDR2 SODIMM RAM at 667 MHz .

 

Even with me running Tiger, I could tell the difference between 1GBs and 2GBs of RAM when running Photoshop and things.

It isn't needed seeing as before I had 2GBs, it was still fast, but it's definately nice.

 

At first, when you buy the macbook be sure to buy it with 1Gb, then as everyone else says, go to www.newegg.com or even frys.com and look for some good RAM deals with the specifications that Sam posted. It is very easy to install, I suggest you do it yourself. Just be sure to real the instruction manual and look up some installation videos on youtube if need be. Good luck.