MBP Upgrade or Buy New

So I have the 17" Macbook Pro from mid-2009 with the 2.8 Ghz and 4GB of RAM. I am trying to decide if I should just go ahead and upgrade it or try to sell it and get a new one. I was thinking about going 8 GB of RAM and then swapping out the optical drive and running 1 SSD for the OS's and then getting a 1TB drive for additional storage. I dont really game on it as it isn't that great and I wasn't sure how the new ones worked either. I primarily use it for school and also setting up my virtual hacking lab that I am using to learn penetration testing.

 

Your proposed upgrade path is a smart way to go. RAM is super cheap, and you can certainly do the SSD/Optibay combo for more and faster storage. Just make sure that if you want a 1 TB internal drive that you get a 9.5 mm one instead of the more common 12.5 mm.

Core i7 MacBooks are much faster and come with better GPUs, but they're not worth the much steeper financial outlay for your tasks. If you wanted to get back into gaming, I'd suggest going for a cheaper, more powerful Windows-based system instead.

 

Good thing about an SSD is you should be able to move it to a new system in another year.

 

I was looking at crucial.com and I am thinking 128GB SSD and then find a decent 1TB drive. I will probably just go w/ crucial memory as well unless someone else has some recommendations.

Computer memory upgrades for Apple MacBook Pro 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (17-inch DDR3) MC226LL/A Mid-2009 Laptop/Notebook from Crucial.com

 

I have a desktop that I use for gaming and was trying to see if it is feasible to move away from it. But at 2500 bucks on the low end for a 17" I will just spend 300 or 400 and go that route.

Also, should I go dual ssd's and then just get an external drive for extra space? I just want to do this once and plan on running a lot of vm's w/ live cd's.

 

It's possible to use a internal dual SSD and a storage external, but IMO that sounds complicated


Btw, try looking at the Vertex 4 or the Kingston 3G SSD for SSD choices


And last, look at the system profiler to see if your optibay is capable of running SATA 3 bandwidths (some MBP has a defect of not having this capability, however apple most likely won't cover)

 

Any other upgrades you can think of that I might be missing?

 

If you wanted a second SSD, you could put one in the Expresscard slot (since you have a 17-inch MBP). This way you could either keep your optical drive or put a traditional platter HDD in its place. RAM and hard drives are about the extent to which one can upgrade the internals in a Mac, at least within the realm of practicality.

 

8gb ram is standard and I think the ram + SSD will buy you another year or two. Good luck and squeeze every last ounce outta that machine...

 

Its a question of sufficient performance vs the money you got on your hands
I doubt you ll see dramatical difference in performance from ssd and especially added ram (it shouldnt add much past 4gb atm).

 

I think the performance of the SSD (if you can install OS X onto the SSD) will be dramatic. The ram, probably not. Try just the SSD first.

 

ye... hard to say though based on the said tasks
"I primarily use it for school and also setting up my virtual hacking lab that I am using to learn penetration testing".

I am for instance either gaming, or opening some large graphic file and working with it for few days. So SSD doesnt really offer much to me. Depending on the tasks it might be very noticeable. On the other hand simple browsing and movie watching shouldnt be putting much load on the system anyway, so i would say that SSD offers all around better experience with generic tasks but it doesnt help where it really matters with calculations, graphics, some other heavy load etc.

 

SSD will load heavy graphics into memory faster.

 

it will, if i you open different files over and over. If you dont it will just load once and remain in the memory. At least thats how i understand it

 

Are there HDD cloning programs for Mac? I know there is time machine, but it doesn't clone the recovery partition.

 

I would strongly recommend the Crucial M4, especially if you can get the 256gb version which has been as cheap as $200 new lately. It is a very fast and reliable drive.

 

SuperDuper!

 

For the record, I can speak from personal experience here.

I just (yesterday) went from a 2009 MBP 17" (2.66ghz C2D) to a current-gen Core i7 2.4ghz MBP 17". Ya know.. it's *not* significant faster in general use. Browsing, working in apps, whatever. I mean the C2D was kind of overkill for the tasks I do, so that stuff hasn't changed much. The one distinct improvement I did make, was I got the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid drive for it, which I notice has improved load times all across the board vs. the old machine (which had a Seagate 7200rpm 500GB drive).

The Intel HD3000 is definitely better than the 9400M, that's for certain. However, it's still slower than the 9600M GT which I always used anyway, so I once again disabled auto switching and only use the ATI.

Otherwise, it's basically the exact same experience.

 

I am trying to decide if I want to sell the desktop for about 1200 or 1300 and possible get a gaming laptop. I just don't know if I want to make that kind of move or not. Regardless the mac is great for everything but gaming. I am just trying to bump it up.

With the hacking labs it is mostly just running 2 or 3 vm's at a time to work on penetration testing etc. Other than that I do some development but none of it is really taxing. I think the only game loaded on it is warcraft and it is tolerable, not sure if D3 will load and or play at all on it.

 

There are many other files that need to be loaded from your hard drive, even if you aren't loading them manually. The entire operating system is stored on the hard drive.

 

For cloning Mac discs, Carbon Copy Cloner is my go-to. One of the recent updates added the feature to clone over Lion Recovery partitions, which is huge for cloning over your OS properly (assuming you're running Lion) to a new SSD.

Take the poor student route (take it from me, a fellow poor student!), and upgrade your RAM & SSD instead of getting a new rig. The SSD will make such a huge difference in day-to-day operation and is well worth the investment.

An optical bay HDD caddy is also a good upgrade; I've got my SSD in the caddy and a 500GB HDD in the drive bay, so that I can use the sudden drop sensor for the HDD. It's very nice to not have to worry about running out of space.

 

I looked at CCC's website and FAQs but couldn't find the answer - can that program clone a drive that has a Boot Camp partition installed on it?

 

WMs usually gobble up RAM pretty quickly so 8GB is probably a good idea. A SSD will be faster across the board no matter what you do. I've seen this very clearly in windows and my friend has seen it too when going from his MBP to a MBA.

 

CCC can't clone a Boot Camp partition. For that, you'll need to use WinClone. It used to be free, but with the update to Lion the dev started charging for it. Worth it though, I find it incredibly useful.