Bob Smith wrote:
As per your computer I would HIGHLY recommend replacing the hard drive with one of the SSDs from macsales.com. Huge performance boost. I've setup a couple of MacBook Pros with a 250GB SSD for system/apps/Lightroom Catalog/Photoshop Scratch. I replaced the DVD drive with a regular 1TB spinning hard drive for data storage. These are easy mods to do yourself. I hook the DVD up by
The latest MacBook Pros seem to have zero upgrade capability, not even the battery can be replaced. This is a major turn off if you ask me - basically planned obsolescence, as rechargeable batteries are certain to wear out in a few years (or worse). In fact my current MacBook killed its battery within 1 year due to what appears to have been dodgy firmware settings in the battery management software. Luckily it was relatively simple and cheap to buy another battery, replace it myself and turn off the sleep mode. [ It appears that the machine didn't switch from sleep to hard shutdown when the battery dropped below the critical threshold after being unused for two weeks, and because Li-ion batteries become dangerous if over discharged, the battery appeared to have set its suicide bit. Apple had a replacement program for a remarkably similar fault, but it didn't cover my particular machine.] That, and a very bad experience with my previous Titanium Apple laptop (faulty or possibly wrongly chosen hall effect sensor that I eventually had to fix myself for about $2 after the Apple authorised dealer happily replaced the motherboard for $1000, and when that didn't fixed it told me that "their repair guarantee only covered the replacement component, they didn't guarantee to fix the fault") has given me the impression that Apples hardware is not always what it's cracked up to be, and their current direction has not improved serviceability at all. Graeme Gill.