Hello all,

just to make you aware of a few upgrades I've just done to my Macbook Pro. It is the 2011 13" one.

Crucial are doing an 8GB RAM upgrade at the minute for £38 - http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=AF6FD410A5CA7304

Just installed that kit tonight and it works great, computer is far faster.

Also bought this kit which allows you to install a 2nd hard drive in place of the optical drive in your Macbook Pro - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004ZXZB3E/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

Used a tool called Carbon Copy Cloner which effectively copies your entire boot drive to another hard drive. So originally I had a 500gb HDD in my MBP as the boot drive. I copied all the files on this to a 1TB external drive via USB, then put this hard drive in place of the original one. The original 500gb drive is then placed in the optical drive bay using the kit above and now I've 1500GB of space to play with

I then set the 500gb drive as my system drive, and have the 1TB one for music, movies etc.

Just a heads up to some upgrades available, if you need any help just ask!

How do you now access DVD's etc?

Can you put the optical drive in a casing like an external hard drive case?

Blah Blah, macs are so great, they're just amazing. They always work and don't get viruses and I can do what I want.

Until I want to upgrade anything, because the apple price was so high on upgrades that I didn't do it.

Now I want to upgrade, I have to remove other features.

Seriously, why not just fit a bigger 7k2 HDD or a hybrid drive or just a bigger flash drive.

Removing the DVD drive seems a bit mad.

In fairness, I never use my optical drive on my Toshiba laptop (not even to install Windows on it, thanks to SCCM/OSD), so my next work laptop isn't having an optical drive at all. If the kits are available, and you actually need the storage, then I'd happily bin off a DVD drive for a second HD, although I'd have also tried to combine it with an SSD boot drive upgrade and a large "media" drive. Having recently SSDed up my home desktop, I'm now a convert now they're coming down in price having avoided them for years due to poor "bang-per-buck".

Blah Blah, macs are so great, they're just amazing. They always work and don't get viruses and I can do what I want.

Until I want to upgrade anything, because the apple price was so high on upgrades that I didn't do it.

Now I want to upgrade, I have to remove other features.

Seriously, why not just fit a bigger 7k2 HDD or a hybrid drive or just a bigger flash drive.

Removing the DVD drive seems a bit mad.

Don't buy the new 15" MacBook Pro with retina screen then......just like the MacBook Airs nothing is upgradable. Stunning screen though.

You can buy bigger/faster ssds for the MBA and I'm pretty sure you can get replacement batteries.

Although as Rockhopper says, not the best bet to get the Retina MBP if you want to upgrade it.

You can upgrade the SSD in the MBA upto the 2011 version, the 2012 version uses a custom connector which although simillar is not compatible with the 2012 Retina MBP which also uses a custom connector.

I upgraded my 2010 MBP using 8GB crucial memory within days of buying it, the ram was very expensive then. Also changed the HDD before I even setup OSX. The battery is still in great condition after 2 years, and despite being used 8 hours a day on mains power it still provides enough juice to run the MBP all evening and the following morning before going to work.

I agree Mannyo. The battery life on the MBP's is excellent. I still get 4-5 hours of real world usage with my mid 2009 13" model. The later versions last even longer.