I am looking at a MacBook Pro, but I noticed that you can’t get them configured with a 7200RPM drive on the 15” model anymore. Does anyone have one with a 5400RPM drive? How is the performance in Parallels? I will still be doing a decent amount of .NET work inside of Parallels and when running on a PC a 7200 RPM drive is almost a requirement for VS2005.

Anyone done a HDD upgrade on a macbook? How difficult is it?

Thanks, James

I have a first-generation Intel 17” model with 5400RPM drive. I run Parallels all the time, and the performance is quite good… it’s as good if not better than my one-year-old HP laptop. I don’t use it much for hardcode development anymore though… just IE testing, Office, and Quickbooks. And performance has been on par with my other Windows machines for those apps. Haven’t done a HDD upgrade yet.

James,

I just bought a 15” MacBook Pro C2D 2.33 with the 5400rpm drive and parallels runs great on it. But I don’t really do any .NET on it. I’m in OS X 95% of the time.

If you’re thinking about upgrading it yourself, check out the guides here: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/

I upgraded my old PowerBook and it wasn’t too hard. Just make sure you prepare a nice work area and organize your screws as you disassemble your machine.

I would seriously suggest going for 7200 if possible. I made the mistake of going with 5400 on a 17 inch, and while its ok, its gets really really slow when doing a large file copy.

Normal everyday use in parallels is fine and vs.net runs like a champ. But the added RPMS would be a big boost.

my budget will currently stretch to a black macbook (not the pro) with an extra gig of ram (making it 2GB). is it worth trying to scrape together an extra £240 to get the entry level macbook pro (with only 1GB of ram)?

Jon, in my experience, if you’re going to be using it pretty much for Rails development, no. I have both the 17” MBP and a black Macbook. It’s got basically the same guts in a smaller package. And it doesn’t get frying pan hot like my Pro does either. If you can stand staring at a 13” screen all day, go with the Macbook.

heh – i’m not likely to get the chance to stare at a mac “all day” for a while yet! thanks for your advice.

That’s an interesting contrast between the Pro and the mac book. I’d had my heart set on the pro but I like the idea of a 13” black mac book so I may go that way and also save myself some cash!

Quick question – is it necessary to buy extra ram from Apple or can you buy it elsewhere and fit it yourself as you would do with a PC?

Andy, I purchased a 1 GB stick from “4AllMemory” for my MBP, and it works great. $120 vs. $170 from Apple.

Great – thanks Brian

Another benefit of buying the Macbook instead of the pro is that the HD is dead simple to upgrade on the Macbooks.