While there has been quite a debate over Apple’s decision to provide an SD card slot rather than an ExpressCard slot on the MacBook Pro 13″ and 15″ models, the fact of the matter remains that these machines are available and that many of us will be using these laptops. So how do we make the best use of our new port?

The first few suggestions are obvious – use the card reader to read the information from your SD compatible camera, PDA, or cell phone. Also use the SD card for removable storage just as you would use a USB flash drive.

In my overall review of the MacBook Pro at its release, I had gone into detail on the storage capabilities of the SD cards to come. And I touched on the bootability aspect of the SD card slot. But what makes this important? Well the answer is twofold. A trim, clean, uncluttered startup disk boots much faster than one with all your programs and files installed on it. As a laptop typically only comes with one hard drive, we used to be limited to using the internal drive with all our saved data and programs cluttering it up, or carrying around a separate external boot drive such as a Mercury On-The-Go or Express. The SD card is physically so much smaller and an 8GB card has more than enough room to hold a trim, clean version of OS X 10.5 (a 16GB SD card has enough room to hold a full version of the OS).  Just make sure you don’t pull out the SD card while you’re still using it.

Additionally and more importantly, an SD card with the operating system installed can be used as an emergency startup disk. In the case of a corrupted drive directory structure, this can come in very handy if you find yourself unable to boot your MacBook Pro. For more detailed information on restoring a corrupted drive, read OWC Larry’s article “Resolving System Problems”

So, how do you go about making a bootable SD card? It’s actually quite simple.

To install OS X 10.5, you’ll need at least an 8GB card (There should be smaller space requirement for Snow Leopard, but we won’t know for sure until after its release).

Format the SD card using disk utility. Under the “Partition” tab, highlight the SD card you want to format. Set the card for one partition and Format: Mac OS Extended Journaled. Give the volume a name and click on “Options”. You need to choose GUID partition table in order to boot from the card. Click “Apply” and the drive will be erased and formatted correctly.

Once formatted, use your OS X 10.5 install DVD and run the installer. Select the SD card as the destination. Follow the prompts until you get to the “Install Summary” page.

Choose “customize” on the Install Summary page and uncheck Printer Drives, Additional Fonts, Languages, etc. so all you’re left with is the “Essential System Software” checked. Don’t worry, it should be grayed out as an option that you can’t accidentally uncheck. This will cut the installation space in about 6.2GB from 11.6GB. Click install and let it work. When its done installing it is ready to use. Along with the OS, it is also a good idea to keep a few disk utilities on your emergency startup disk. Just a few we suggest are:

TechTool Pro
DiskWarrior
ProSoft Drive Genius
ProSoft Data Rescue II
File Salvage

To boot exclusively from the SD card, set the SD card as the Startup disk in System Preferences>Startup Disk.

Otherwise, insert the card and hold the option key at startup to manually choose the SD card as your Emergency Startup Disk.

Can’t always get what you want…

In an earlier post, we discussed the removal of the ExpressCard/34 slot from the 15″ MacBook Pro and the implications of that loss:http://blog.macsales.com/1391-apple-giveth-apple-taketh-away

As music production becomes more commonplace outside of the studio walls, musicians have become more and more dependent on the power and portability of the notebook.  It’s this need for a high performance machine that has made the MacBook Pro a staple for creative professionals.  Up until recently, increased features have been packed into these machines.  However, it seems that some of the features we’ve all come to know and love have been taken away from the most recent additions of the MBP product line -namely the second FireWire bus and expansion capabilities of the ExpressCard slot.  So, before we start crying “the sky is falling,” we need to answer three very important questions:

1. What have we lost?
2. What do we need?
3. What do we have?

We’ve lost expandability, we need sufficient bandwidth for our work flow, and we DO in fact have just that.

…but if you try sometimes…

All we have to do is re-assess our storage and interface requirements.  When recording music, you have to remember that audio data is substantially smaller than video.  Therefore, the bandwidth provided by FireWire 400 or USB 2.0 speeds is more than sufficient for most.  So what’s the bottom line?  You have two practical configurations for your new 15″ MacBook Pro:

1. USB 2.0 Audio Interface and FW 800 (or 400) External HD
2. FireWire 400 Audio Interface and FireWire 400 External HD (daisy chained)

…you get what you need.

In looking at the two configurations above, there is a method to the madness.  Option #1 gives you more bandwidth for your external hard drive, which can be useful for projects utilizing MIDI & virtual instrument libraries that require more resources for disk streaming.  Being a musician myself, I completely understand the hesitation involved when “USB” is mentioned.  In the past, USB has always been considered “the slow interface.” It’s because of this that I will mention that the new MBP’s have been bench-marked having much higher “real world” throughput than earlier models.  Therefore, you will see little to no performance loss when using a USB audio interface as opposed to FireWire.  So, you can think of Option #1 as your “MIDI Workstation” scenario.

Option #2 allows you to still keep a useful FW400 speed for your external HD, while using a FW400 audio interface (note: when daisy chaining a FW400 device with a FW800 device, both devices will be functioning at a FW400 speed). Currently, most audio interfaces that utilize a FireWire connection are FW400 so you’re not losing any performance on that end.  The benefit of these interfaces are that they are typically built to  handle more simultaneous audio input for multi-tracking than their USB counterparts.  You can think of Option #2 as your “portable live audio recording scenario.”

This takes care of our USB and FireWire issues, but what about the loss of other potential ExpressCard expansions?  Some companies have developed ExpressCard upgrades for audio professionals that use their laptops in a production setting.  Are these upgrades and expansions worthless now?  Absolutely not!  However, if you need to utilize these professional additions you’ll need to purchase the new 17″ MacBook Pro which still provides the user with an ExpressCard slot.  For those of you that don’t want to lug a monstrous 17″ notebook around, your only other alternative is to purchase an earlier version of the MacBook Pro which are still incredibly viable machines for audio/music professionals.

Mr. Jobs and the gang threw us quite a curve ball with this recent feature loss, but have no fear!  OWC is here to light the way through these murky waters of change to help you audio professionals get the most out of your hardware.  You can still make music without an ExpressCard!

It’s Friday, and that means we’ve got another Instructional video for you! As you might expect, this week we’re installing a new hard drive in a the mid-2009 revision of the 15” MacBook Pro.

Upgrading the hard drive in your MacBook Pro not only allows you to store more files, but  it also can improve performance if you’re upgrading from a 5400 RPM drive to a 7200 RPM drive.

As usual, you can find the new video both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

Next week, by popular demand, we’ll be starting a series on installing drives in our external enclosures. While it’s common knowledge that our enclosures are made of high-quality components and materials, we also believe that “quality” also includes giving you complete, easy-to-follow instructions on how to assemble and use them.

Stay tuned; as each one becomes available, we’ll announce them here.

It’s the end of another week, and you know what that means: another OWC Instructional Video!

This time around we show you how to upgrade the Memory in the mid-2009 15” MacBook Pro.

These MacBook Pros can take up to 8GB of memory, doubling the maximum capacity of the previous model. This is a big boost for those using memory-hungry applications, like many graphics and audio suites, on your MacBook Pros.

They’re not the only ones that can benefit, though. Snow Leopard (with its 64-bit architecture and advanced resource management) looming on the horizon, larger amounts of memory will be more efficiently handled, increasing the overall performance of your system.

Get ahead of the game and upgrade your memory today. OWC has everything you need, from the correct memory for these models to our step-by-step installation videos, which can be found in our Tech Center and on our YouTube channel.

Last week, my esteemed co-blogger, OWC Michael, posted his findings on the new MacBook Pros. While I agree with him that they’re pretty nice machines, I do take exception to the assertion that removal of the ExpressCard/34 slot from the 15” MacBook Pro isn’t that much of a loss.

The main thing we lose is versatility. That expandability was what many people (myself included) saw as the main delimiter between the “consumer” and the “pro” lines – not the materials or the size. The Mac Pro has expansion options via PCI Express cards, and the MacBook Pros had the ExpressCard/34 slot. The iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook don’t have these options.

With the notebook replacing the desktop machine as many users’ primary computer, this expandability is a key option to many Power Users. The simplest example is for those who use an ExpressCard for wireless connectivity. Most of the major cell phone companies I checked offer an option to connect to their wireless data networks via an ExpressCard, yet none offered one in an SD format. This is a major snag for those who do a lot of traveling and can’t rely on an available WiFi hotspot for communication.

Then, there is also the versatility in storage. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of people who use their notebooks as a desktop replacement. With this use often comes the need (or at least desire) for faster data connection. While FireWire 800 is a nice, fast option, sometimes you need something a little faster – like eSATA. There are a number of eSATA ExpressCards available for fast connection, several of which also support multiple drives.

If FireWire 800 is fast enough enough for you (and, admittedly, for many it is), there’s still only one port on the MacBook Pro. What happens if you have more than one FireWire device you’d like to use at one time? Sure, you can daisy-chain the devices together, but if there’s a single FW400 device in that chain, it reduces all the devices on that chain to FireWire 400 speeds. A simple FireWire ExpressCard allows you to connect multiple FireWire devices without any worry over loss of speed.

Technically, if you have one of the new MacBook Pros and need an ExpressCard/34 slot, you can use a USB to ExpressCard adapter. However, the down side to this is that, rather than the 2.5Gb/s maximum transfer rate of a native ExpressCard/34 interface, you’re limited USB 2.0’s theoretical maximum of 480Mb/s – and we all know that USB speeds usually test considerably slower than that in OS X.

So what about that SD card slot we got in exchange? It’s “okay,” if all your devices use SD cards. However, what about users with cameras or other devices that use Compact Flash (like my Canon EOS Rebel Ti), Sony’s “Memory Stick”, or any of a myriad of other cards? They still need an external USB adapter, making that SD card slot all but useless until you shell out more cash for a new camera/phone/gadget.

I can hear a lot of you saying, “If the ExpressCard/34 slot is so important, then why not just go with the 17” MacBook Pro?”

The answer to this is twofold – price and portability. The 17” MacBook Pro is about $200 more expensive than its 15” counterpart. While that’s not too much more (less than 8%), the “portability” factor also comes into play.

While the extra screen real estate is nice, it comes at the expense of portability. It becomes a tight fit in many laptop bags (often not fitting at all) and on an airplane (especially if you’re flying “coach”), you’ll be lucky if you can open the screen all the way. This is much less the case with the 15” model. Trading that convenience for a ExpressCard/34 slot is counterproductive to the whole point behind having a “pro” notebook in the first place – portability with expandability.

In conclusion, while I’m rather excited about many of the features of the new MacBook Pros, the loss of the ExpressCard/34 slot has me looking in the “Refurb” section of the Apple Store until this oversight is corrected.

It’s a little later than expected, but the latest Instructional Video is ready to go! This time around, we’re showing you how to replace the hard drive in the new 13” MacBook Pro.

I can hear you saying, “Why on earth would I need to upgrade the hard drive? I just got it.” This may be true, but the benefit is twofold. First, as the old axiom goes, you can never have too large a hard drive; no matter how large it is, it will fill up eventually.

The second place you can see a benefit is if you put in a faster hard drive. The faster the hard drive is, the faster the system can access data it needs. The stock drives in the 13” MacBook Pro are 5400 RPM drives. According to our benchmark testing, upgrading to a 7200 RPM hard drive resulted in up to a 6% increase in performance in some tests, particularly the ones involving disk-intensive tasks.

Whatever the reason, our new video shows you how to perform this upgrade step-by-step. As always, you can find the videos both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

In our last installment we visited our findings on the MacBook Pro 17″ model. Logically, we’ll visit the next step down in size.

Installment Two – MacBook Pro 15″

First off, the reduction in starting price from $1999 to $1699 is very exciting, especially when for your $300 ‘discount’ you double the starting memory! The MacBook Pro 15″ now ships with a minimum of 4GB RAM which is easily upgradable to 8GB.

The other major change to the system – Apple has added an SD card reader. Arguably the most popular form of data storage on video cameras, digital cameras, mobile phones, PDAs and GPS receivers; the SD card format is here to stay. I for one couldn’t be happier with this switch from the ExpressCard 34, even if many of my colleagues find they will miss the expandability of the ExpressCard/34 slot. I won’t miss it, and look forward to the advancements in SD cards.

Let’s start with what we’re missing out on with ExpressCard/34. There are several options on the market today for expansion cards. For example, adding more ports to your system. Well, with USB or FireWire, if you need more ports, you can always go with a hub to add more ports, keeping in mind that the more you add to a laptop, the more you have to lug around with you or give up the portability. There are also the myriad of memory card readers, but really there are plenty of USB options on the market and if you happen to use the SD card standard in your devices (as I do), you’re all set. There is also the option of adding eSATA ports to the system, but the main reason for having the port is external storage. Laptops are meant to keep their portability and I for one don’t want to lug around a 4 bay or better RAID 5 storage solution and have to find an unused power outlet every time I want to use it.

Ok, I’ll concede that you can’t beat the benefit to ExpressCard/34 wireless cards for those of you who travel a lot and find yourself in places without WiFi access. I for one, don’t travel that often and my routine takes me from one WiFi hotspot to another.

If you really miss it, we do carry a USB ExpressCard/34 adapter for $9.99

So, what is there to gain with SD?  Simple….. Storage. Nice, light, massively portable storage.

At the time of writing this article, SD and SDHC (high-capacity) are readily available on the market with capacities of up to 4GB and 32GB respectively. While not colossal in size, the SD card can hold several documents or presentations which can then be physically removed from the computer for safekeeping and security. The SD card slot is bootable and an SDHC card could certainly store an operating system and several utilities as an emergency boot disk or even relocate your home folder to the SD card to use as a physical key to your computer.

The 2009 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) however introduced the SDXC format introducing 32GB to 2TB of storage in the same form factor. Kevin Schader, director of communications for the SD Association, recently announced that SDXC cards should be hitting the market in 2010 starting with a 64GB capacity.  I for one can’t wait to see the maximums realized on the SDXC form factor where I can carry around several 2TB SDXC cards with a 300MB/s transfer rate in my pocket.

Upgrades, Upgrades Upgrades…

Ok, now that you’ve decided that this is the machine for you, what can you do to make it better?

The most economical upgrade has always been memory – and OWC has always had you covered there. The 15″ MacBook Pro can support up to 8GB of memory. Ordering the 8GB stock from Apple will cost an additional $1,000 – or- you can get this same memory upgrade separately from OWC for considerably less. We’ll even show you how to install it in our Installation Video Series (the video is not complete at the time of this posting but should be available online within 1-2 weeks).

Our benchmarking on these models is nearly complete (we’re still awaiting the 15″ MacBook Pro 2.66GHz model) and you can see for yourself here just how much faster and more efficient these systems run when given enough memory. Once Snow Leopard is released, were predicting these numbers will really take off between the true 64-bit processing and Grand Central Dispatch.

Additional speed can be gained by upgrading the hard drive to either a 7200RPM model or going to speed and security of a Solid State Drive. Again, the installation instructions will be available within the next few weeks in our Installation Video Series.

As far as the optical drive goes, there isn’t an internal option available that is faster or includes Blu-ray (which we’re still waiting on Apple to support natively) than the 8x slot loading SuperDrive already installed. As technologies advance down the line, you can be sure we’ll be on the cutting edge and will be ready with the units themselves and the video instructions to match.

We’ve got new hardware from Apple, and that can mean only one thing: new instructional videos!

This time around, we show you how to put more memory in your 13″ MacBook Pro. After all, these new releases can take up to 8GB. We’ve proven time and time again that more memory gives you better performance, so with OWC’s great memory prices, there’s no reason for you to stick with the 2GB that Apple sticks you with in the low-end model.

Upgrading the memory in MacBook Pro is incredibly simple to do. If you can use a screwdriver (preferably one from the Newer Technology 11-Piece Tool Kit), you have all the skills necessary to perform this upgrade.

Don’t believe me? Check out our how-to video, either in our Tech Center or on our YouTube Channel, and see how easy it is.

It’s almost as easy as pumping gas.

Well, most of the new MacBook Pro laptops have arrived and we’ve been busy in the lab updating compatibility, fully testing each memory module, and benchmarking the memory in the machines.  I must say, these machines are tight!

I’m going to use a series of three blog posts to review each of the different machines with some of our findings…

Installment One – MacBook Pro 17″

The biggest and baddest of the MacBook Pro line, in short, starts with two ups and one down:

UP - both models have a boost to processor speed over prior generation. (2.8 and 3.06GHz vs. 2.66 and 2.93GHz)

UP – both models have a boost to starting hard drive capacity over prior generation. (500GB 5400RPM standard vs. 320GB 5400RPM)

DOWN – the price starts $300 lower than the prior generation!

Any way you add it up – what a deal.

Some very noteworthy non-changes are in order as well:

ExpressCard/34: Mainly the ExpressCard/34 slot is still present on the 17″ MacBook Pro.  It has been removed from all other MacBook Pro machines and replaced with an SD card slot – but we’ll get into that in further installments.  At this time, if you’re looking to upgrade and are among the single-digit percentage of users (according to Apple) that use ExpressCards, then the 17″ model is the machine you’ll need.  There are ExpressCards to add eSATA capability, additional FireWire 800 or 400 ports, or media readers for compact flash, MMC, Memory Stick, Memory Stick pro, xD cards and others.

Graphics and video: The 17-inch high-resolution LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with support for millions of colors is an absolutely brilliant display.  With a 1920 x 1200 native resolution and up to 2560 x 1600 on an external display, screen real-estate doesn’t become an issue.  If you need more than that – you could always add a USB display adapter or two (or three!) for a plethora of monitor configurations.

Upgrades, Upgrades Upgrades…

Ok, now that you’ve decided that this is the machine for you, what can you do to make it better?

The most economical upgrade has always been memory – and OWC has always had you covered there. The 17″ MacBook Pro can support up to 8GB of memory. Ordering the 8GB stock from Apple will cost an additional $1,000 – or- you can get this same memory upgrade separately from OWC for considerably less.  We’ll even show you how to install it in our Installation Video Series (the installation process is exactly the same as the previous generation MacBook Pro 17″ Early 2009 “Unibody”).

Our benchmarking on these models are now complete and you can see for yourself here just how much faster and more efficient these systems run when given enough memory.  Once Snow Leopard is released were predicting these numbers will really take off between the true 64-bit processing and Grand Central Dispatch.

Additional speed can be gained by upgrading the hard drive to either a 7200RPM model or going to speed and security of a Solid State Drive. Again, the installation instructions for either is available our Installation Video Series.

As far as the optical drive goes, there isn’t an internal option available that is faster or includes Blu-ray (which we’re still waiting on Apple to support natively) than the 8x slot loading SuperDrive already installed.  As technologies advance down the line, you can be sure we’ll be on the cutting edge and will be ready with the units themselves and the video instructions to match.

Well, the WWDC Keynote has now come and gone. While His Steveness wasn’t in attendance (at least not on camera), Uncle Phil managed to deliver a plate full of Apple goodness to us, no matter what you’re into.

Hardware

Time for an update across the MacBook & MacBook Pro families. Let’s start out with the one that caught my attention.

MacBook Pro 15″
Well, they got rid of the removable battery and have changed over to the same setup that’s in the 17″. This isn’t really all that surprising, as it keeps specs in line with the 17″ version. More surprising is the change in slots – we lose an Express Slot but gain an SD slot. This is great if you have a camera that uses SD cards, but it’s pretty darn crummy if you want to hook up drives via eSATA.

It seems they’ve improved the display a little bit and, as expected, there’s a little bit of a speed bump up to 3.06 GHz, but what’s that? A price drop!?!?! Starting at $1699… wow! Now I only have to sell one kidney to afford one.

MacBook Pro 17″
Less excitement here; No new features, but at least you get to keep your Express slot. Price drop here, too – looks like those recent Microsoft ads are having more effect than people would have you believe…

Unibody 13″
The biggest changes seem to have come for the 13″ Unibody MacBook. It’s got the same battery upgrade as the 15″, but it also gained the SD slot, where nothing existed before. The big news, however is that it gained back the one thing it was missing before – FireWire!!!

Yes, it seems Apple has heard our pleas and has added a FireWire 800 port. Though not eSATA speeds, at least FW800 is faster than USB 2.0.

Since the addition of FireWire 800 puts its features on par with the MacBook Pro line, the 13″ Unibody MacBooks have been reclassified – they are now the 13” MacBook Pros. Even with that “promotion” these guys have had a price drop as well, starting at $1199.

MacBook Air
Not much to report here, other than a $700 price drop! Prices now start around $1499. Still a bit much for a machine that has no upgradability, but at least its a huge step in the right direction.

Software

OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard is on its way. Apparently, we’re going to see a lot of speedups in the new version. It appears that they’ve rewritten the Finder from the bottom up, which should give us all sorts of speed boosts, and have also made improvements to the Dock, including integrating it with Exposé.

Those of you who are feeling the squeeze of Leopard’s rather copious install size will be happy to know that a standard installation Snow Leopard will be less than half the size of the standard install of Leopard! That should be a savings of around 6GB!

Snow Leopard, with Grand Central, Open CL, and other system enhancements, will finally be able to harness the full power of your computer’s resources. A fully 64-bit OS will allow you to more effectively utilize larger amounts of memory, and Grand Central will help distribute both memory and processor cycles to all your apps, allowing them to take advantage of all available resources.

The full version of Safari 4 will come installed (it is also available via Apple’s site and/or Software Update), featuring a slew of improvements, including a faster JavaScript engine and HTTP streaming for audio and video.

QuickTime has also gotten a boost, becoming “QuickTime X” (pronounced “Quick Time Ten”). Much of the improvements have been made under the hood, though the interface has also gotten a newer, slicker overhaul as well.

Finally, office workers everywhere that rely on Exchange compatibility for their day-to-day tasks can rejoice. Mail, iCal, and Address Book now have support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

iPhone OS 3.0

Of course, most of the buzz around WWDC this year was centered around the iPhone.

Unfortunately, not too much more was revealed about iPhone OS 3.0 than has already been discussed.

The big one, of course is Cut/Copy/Paste functionality, which should be available system-wide. Landscape mode will be available for Mail and a couple other apps. Many of the same enhancements in the desktop version of Safari have also filtered down to the iPhone OS version as well.

Google Maps are now easily embeddable into iPhone apps, and have turn-by-turn support.

There are a couple of other things that really caught my attention – one that’s been discussed before and one that’s fairly new.

First, iPhone 3.0 will support tethering! In theory, this means you can use your iPhone’s data connection with your laptop, an invaluable feature if you’re on the road a lot. Unfortunately, support for this feature is not available everywhere.

Another interesting feature that I’m sure will be popular around here is the “Find My iPhone” option. Effectively, it uses triangulation and GPS features to locate the approximate location of your iPhone, and can even override the mute switch to play a tone so you can find. If you still can’t find it, then you can remotely send a “wipe” command, removing all the user data on the phone, so nobody else can make off with your precious data.

This last feature would have been a lifesaver two years ago when I put OWC Larry’s good humor and benevolence to the test by… *ahem*… accidentally losing his iPhone at Macworld. Yes, I was that guy… If we’d had the “Find My iPhone” feature, we might have been able to recover the phone and I would have one less embarrassing event to try and live down around here.

iPhone OS 3.0 will be available on June 17, so it’s a little more than a week before you can take advantage of all the new features… and before Larry lets me within 500 feet of his new iPhone.

iPhone 3G S

If you follow any of the rumor sites, there’s been some buzz about a new iPhone rearing its head around this time. Turns out the rumors were true, and we’ve been given the iPhone 3G S.

This new iPhone seems to be considerably faster than predecessor, with both software enhancements and upgraded network support, allowing up to 7.2 Megabit speeds via HSDPA.

Features also got a boost with the introduction of a three megapixel camera with autofocus and auto white balance support. You can also capture video at 30 frames per second at 640×480 resolutions, and even edit it down via touch. Both video and photos can be shard via MMS, email, and MobileMe.

Another new feature is Voice Control. Its an interesting concept, especially when using the phone or iPod features in the car. Unfortunately, you still have to hold down the button to activate it, so it’s not completely hands-free. It’s a start, though.

Business users also haven’t been left out. By popular request hardware encryption is now available. There’s also a new Compass application. Its integration with Maps opens up many nice options for helping you find your way around when visiting another town, be it for business or pleasure.

Last, but not least, battery life has been improved – up to 5 hours talk or 9 hours of WiFi internet.

When they’re available on June 19, expect to pay $199 for a 16GB or $299 for a 32GB model. If those prices are a little steep, Apple is continuing to sell the iPhone 3G, for only $99.

In summary

Clocking in at a little over 2 hours, the WWDC keynote had a lot to offer. We got updated MacBooks, iPhones, and previews of the OS that runs on them. This is just a quick rundown of what was discussed. Keep checking back as we go more in-depth on the new developments (no pun intended).

There are very few certainties in life. Death and taxes are, of course, the most popular, but right up there is the fact that – barring mechanical failure – your hard drive is going to fill up.

With all the music, movies, files and other stuff we tend to collect on our Macs, it really is a matter of time before you start running out of space. While it is fairly simple to gain some more space by cleaning out some of the accumulated junk, sometimes its preferable just to upgrade to a larger hard drive instead.

OWC has instructional videos for replacing the hard drive in a large number of Macs. This week, we’ve added yet another one: The 17″ MacBook Pro (non-unibody). If you’ve been feeling the hard drive pinch, but haven’t yet made the leap, check out the video in our Tech Center or on our YouTube channel, and see how easy it is.

Now that we’ve covered the basic upgrades for the new 2009 Macs, its time to get back to showing you how to upgrade an older machine so you can still enjoy using an older Mac while it while you save up your pennies (or, as Microsoft would have you believe, sell a kidney or your first-born) for a new one.

This time around, we’re swapping out the optical drive in a pre-Unibody 17″ MacBook Pro. Over time, with a number of different machines, I’ve had quite a few stock optical drives fail on me, so knowing how to replace one is always a good skill to have.

As always, you can check out the new videos either in our Tech Center, or on our YouTube Channel.

Apple’s latest edition to their lineup, the  MacBook Pro 15″ (Early 2009) ’Unibody’ machines are a welcome addition indeed.  Boasting a definite speed bump to 2.66GHz and 2.93GHz of processor speed and now the ability to use up to 8GB of memory! More information can be found at yesterday’s hungry, hungry MacBook Pro blog post.

As promised in that post, the benchmark results are in!

The testing of additional memory in these systems does show a solid performance boost with the addition of our 4GB memory modules.  To view the tests for yourself see our Upgrading Memory in your MacBook / MacBook Pro 15″ page.

To compare the raw processor speed of the new model versus the previous versions you’ll want to check out the Upgrading Memory and a Hard Drive in your MacBook Pro 15″ page.

OWC just received the new, speed-bumped 15″ MacBook Pros that Apple released last month. While the boost in processor speed is nice, there’s another performance booster that Apple has remained relatively quiet about: these newer models can handle up to 8GB of memory!

That’s right! You can replace one factory 2GB module with an OWC 4GB module to go to 6GB, or replace both to take it all the way to 8GB, just like their 17″ brethren. We know. We confirmed it ourselves, in actual MacBook Pros, right here in our own testing facility.

We’ll be posting the benchmark results of how much this memory increases performance in these models shortly, but as we have all seen time and time again, adding more memory results in better overall performance. With more memory, you can “feed” all those memory-hungry apps like Photoshop, ProTools and Adobe AfterEffects and enjoy the performance increase of many common tasks.

You may be wondering if Apple supports this configuration, since they’ve said very little about it. Apparently, they are supporting this configuration since they are selling an 8GB upgrade kit on their site. Perhaps there has been little fanfare on their behalf because that particular upgrade is going for $1200!

Fortunately, you don’t have to shell out that much. OWC has you covered with a much more wallet-friendly solution.

However, this 8GB maximum only applies to the new 2.66GHz and 2.93GHz MacBook Pro 15.4″ models that were released in March 2009. The October ‘08 “Unibody” MacBook Pros remain limited to a maximum of 6GB, as do the prior 15.4” models equipped with 2.53GHz or 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo processors.

OWC offers a full line of memory for upgrading nearly every Apple model made in the last twenty years. Whatever model MacBook Pro (or MacBook… or Mac Pro… or Mac mini… or iMac… etc.) you have, you can count on OWC to have the correct memory to maximize your Mac.

Faster Read/Write to 8X for DVDs, 24X for CDs — Priced from $159.99 Add Latest Optical Drive Performance to Existing MacBook/MacBook Pros

November 25, 2008, Woodstock, IL — Other World Computing (OWC®) http://www.macsales.com, a leading Mac and PC technology company, announced today two new OWC “Mercury” SuperDrive Internal Upgrade Kits for MacBook 13″ and MacBook Pro 15″ pre-Unibody notebook computers.

The new OWC Mercury SuperDrive Internal Upgrades offer faster read/write for DVD+/-R/RW, Dual-Layer DVD, DVD-RAM, and CD-R/RW; with burn speeds of up to 8X for DVDs and 24X for CDs.  OWC Mercury SuperDrive Upgrade Kits provide low-cost options for adding the latest optical drive performance and features to existing MacBook and MacBook Pro computers.

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Greetings again from Woodstock! I think we’ve got a nice variety of information in this newlstter edition and hope you’ll enjoy. Got 6GBs of memory for MacBooks, a new ‘Voyager’ HD Dock, a realworld look at the Unibody MacBooks + lots more in between. Here we go!

Install up to 6.0GB in MacBook & MacBook Pro Core 2 Duos

One of my favorite things to say and show is how more memory really makes the difference. For nearly two years we’ve been working to provide a solution that would allow us to break the 4GB limit in Core 2 Duo Mac models. While we’ve been able to build 4GB DDR2 SO-DIMM 667MHz models for some time, the challenge – or really what ended up being the wait – was for the memory device components that could run at a low power and heat level as to meet specification and provide the reliable operation required of every OWC module.

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Lower Cost than Factory Options and Now up to 50% More Total Memory!

November 6, 2008, Woodstock, IL — Other World Computing (OWC®) http://www.macsales.com, a leading Mac and PC technology company, announced today new OWC 4GB modules and 6GB Memory Upgrade Sets for MacBook 13″, MacBook Pro 15″, and MacBook Pro 17″ Models, which prior factory and after-market options limited memory to a maximum of 4GB total.

The additional memory provides a significant benefit to users of high-memory intensive applications, such as audio/video, photo, 3D modeling, as well as offering overall system performance benefits.

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