Upgrading Your Old MacBook With an SSD Could Make It Nearly 4X as Fast [Video]

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Posted August 19, 2011 at 4:11pm by Shalom Levytam

Upgrading your old MacBook with a new SSD and a little more RAM could result in significant performance gains, as a video from TUAW demonstrates.

Playing around with a new MacBook Air in the shops brought back that feeling of "click it and it happens" to OS X, but I found myself unable to afford one unless I could sell my old machine first. After several weeks of trying, with no one offering what I felt was a fair price for my equipment, I instead decided to upgrade my old hardware with a solid-state drive and some more RAM.

Check out the before and after video below which shows a near 4x speed improvement by adding 2GB of RAM and a 240 GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD from Other World Computing to an Early 2008 MacBook Pro.

[Update: video replaced with another example]

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Ranmat - August 20, 2011 at 7:31am

Probably best to use an SSD and then add extra ram to take advantage of the new SSD speed.

Sharp - August 20, 2011 at 2:45pm

No need for extra ram after ssd. Ssd will boost it to the max. Extra ram is needed only if you use memory hungry apps like video editing soft etc.

Sharp - August 19, 2011 at 8:46pm

People who had ssd know what it can do. Hard drive is the only device in computer that is limiting performance. Taking ssd could also result in no need for more ram.

carlos - August 19, 2011 at 5:59pm

SSD only? Tricky statement. Adding the SSD did not make it faster. RAM Upgrade did.

Juhuslik - August 19, 2011 at 6:20pm

It's not tricky. My mid 2010 MBP is starting with 12 sec and turning off in 5. And that only adding Intel 320 120GB SSD drive.

Steve NoJob - August 19, 2011 at 7:55pm

I added 8 GB RAM there is NOT MUCH increase in performance. So it SHOULD be SSD

Chris.Y - August 19, 2011 at 11:20pm

So to say making it 8gb may be pointless ?

Sharp - August 21, 2011 at 1:47pm

Well, SSD is cooler then HDD and uses less energy which is also good for battery. Watching movies online doesn't have much to do with heat, but CPU. Overall, SSD is cooler, faster, shaking while working and hitting the ground is much more durable.