Monthly archives: July 2006

MacBook RAM Dilemma

I can’t believe how hard it is to find some RAM for a MacBook. My mother is getting a MacBook and I advised her to buy 512MB from Apple rather than 2GBs because Apple wants to charge $450 more for 2GB vs 512MB. I know that it doesn’t cost $450 to buy 2GB of RAM on your own (big thanks goes to Robert Evans). Installing memory isn’t hard, either.

Little did I know that finding a place that carries 2GB (1GBx2) of DDR2 667 200-pin SODIMM RAM (PC5300) would be so difficult. I’ve searched the net and haven’t really found a good place to buy it. Some of the places that carry it look to shady for me to send them any money. Other places may have it, but they say they are upgrading their database…little good that does me at the moment. More reputable places like Newegg and TigerDirect don’t have it in stock or it isn’t showing up in their inventory. Crucial.com, one of the main and most popular memory brands, does have it in stock and for sale. However, they seem a bit expensive. They want $322 (including tax and free shipping). That is still much cheaper than Apple, but I have a feeling I can do better than that when I have more time to devote to researching. I want her to get a good brand of RAM. From what I know, Crucial, Kingston, and Samsung are the best. believe Apple uses Samsung in the laptops. Also, I’m going to check with some local Apple stores, maybe I’ll have better luck finding it there.

So, for all my tech savvy readers I have a challenge. \r\nDo she really need 2GBs of RAM or should I advise her to change her order to 1GB which only costs $90 more? (She does a lot of work with Photos (programs include Adobe Photoshop and InDesign). What are the best brands of RAM from your experiences? Where can I find the best price for some RAM? (I only want trustworthy dealers)

Please let me know your thoughts and/or suggestions in the comments. Thanks in advance!

Starting a blog (pt6)

Installation and setup

New to the series? Then checkout parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

Before you can really do any kind of blogging, you must install and setup the Content Management System you picked from part 3 of this series. Due to the broad scope of this topic, I’m only going to provide links to existing tuturials (which is harder than it sounds. Some of these sites practically hide the installation instructions). Plus, l don’t see a need to reinvent the wheel. So, I apologize for not writing a more inclusive post but even if I tried you would not learn everything you needed from me because my knowledge of all the CMSs provided in part 3 is limited. However, just because I haven’t written a tutorial per se, you may still ask me how to do something. I may not know, but I’ll try anyway. FYI: I know WordPress the best.

Here goes nothing:

WordPress

Text Pattern

Radiant

Joomla

Mambo

Blogger

Expression Engine Core

Typo3

Drupal

Movable Type

Type Pad

MediaWiki

I hope these links help you get your new blog installed. If you know of any other great resources let me know. Thanks!