I may as well add my two cents, speaking as both an all-around nerd and someone who bought a gig of RAM this holiday season (it’s the gift that says “Baby, I consider reducing your disk swap space usage a subcomponent of ‘treating you right'”). RAM is indeed ridiculously cheap right now — there’ve been allegations of price-fixing in the memory industry, in fact, as the players try to grapple with the bottom falling out of their market. But a few things about buying memory for your Mac:
- Macbooks can only take up to two gigs. Current-generation MBPs can accept 4 gigs. Buying more than this is pointless. Unless you have a particularly memory-hungry application, 2GB is probably as much as you’ll notice having. UPDATE: Yglesias pointed out to me that I’m wrong — current-generation Macbooks can take 4 gigs, too. You should still probably only buy 2.
- Macs are notoriously finicky about memory. Buying a name brand is probably worth the slight price bump. Crucial is a well-regarded brand, if you’re looking for a suggestion.
- You only get two memory slots in MBs and MBPs, and one of them will already have a stick of RAM in it. Plan accordingly.
- You’re looking to buy DDR2 SODIMMs.
- Newegg is a good, reputable place to get dirt-cheap prices on memory.
End communication!
