These are my new things. [1/3]

As I enter my third semester as a telecommunications major I found myself needing to upgrade my computer gear, especially on my Mac side. I had been using the built in keyboard and mouse on my MacBook Pro since 2009 and it really is just awful for anything but web browsing. 

So, first on the list. 

A hard drive. I regret now not documenting the whole event but putting the thing in was fairly straightforward and without incident. I loaded a backup image from my Time Machine backup and was good to go in just a couple hours.

I bought the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hard drive. It comes with 8GB worth of solid state storage built in that automatically caches commonly accessed sik sectors in order to bring certain actions up to near SSD performance. The results are quite spectacular. Read and Write speeds doubled in many scenarios but keep in mind this is a computer from 2009 and the stock drive was built more for silence and power efficiency where the Seagate is exactly the opposite.

The new drive is noticeably louder in the simple fact that I can hear it when I rarely ever became aware the previous drive was spinning at all. Contrary to the assertions of the anti-Mac crowds, the upgrade was quick and easy...easier than any PC laptop I've ever worked on. Don't get me wrong. Some of the higher end gaming PCs come right apart with upgrades in mind but none, until this past year, that were quite as easy as the MacBook unless they had a special door for the HDD. I'm extremely happy with the upgrade and the size increase is a new order of convenience to someone like me that typically deals with fifty or more gigs of HD footage for editing. It's an absolute pain editing off an external drive not to mention the constant fear the external drive with become disconnected or knocked.

It lacks a hemi but it's still RAM.

This is the first place I would send someone looking to squeeze some life out of their aging MacBook Pro. Especially after upgrading to Lion and beyond, RAM is a valuable resource under Mac OS. My computer came with 4GB stock and I took it up to 8GB with some reasonably priced sticks from Crucial. Seriously. I paid about $40 for this upgrade and the sticks go on sale for much less than that all the time. The performance increase was huge epecially if you use real apps. You know, the stuff that makes a Mac a Mac. Some Mac exclusives like Final Cut Pro X (a solid program despite the haters) or Logic Pro really make great use of the extra RAM. You'll see some great improvement on programs like Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Pro Tools, and of course video games.

Don't expect your machine to become a gaming powerhouse, you really never should have gone with Mac OS if you are after a gaming PC, but it certainly helps with the simpler games like Team Fortress 2 or World of Warcraft. I one hundred percent recommend this upgrade for all users.