How to Upgrade RAM on a Mac Book Pro

Yesterday, after months of thinking about it, I finally took the time to load more memory on Mac Book Pro. Up until then, I was constantly pushing my resources to the limit and the 2 GB I had on there were definitely not making it.

I was often seeing the beach ball (the equivalent of the Windows hour glass). Memory hogs like Firefox often pushed my meager 2 gigs to the limit, especially if I had Windows open in Parallels running a few programs. So on Monday, I finally ordered 4 GB of memory from Mac Connection. It cost me under $100 delivered and it was well worth it.

Yesterday after it arrived, I ran Time Machine and backed up my computer before doing anything. Better to be safe then sorry.

Then I watched the video from Chris Pirillo above, which gives you a great overview of what to expect.

Before you start, you're going to need a jeweler's screw driver to remove the protective plate that covers the memory slot. You can buy a jeweler's screw driver kit at Radio Shack (at least that's where I found mine).

To install the memory:

1. Unplug your machine.
2. Make sure you're grounded by touching metal before you start.
3. Remove the battery.
4. Using a jeweler's phillips screw driver with a very small head, remove the teeny tiny screws that hold the memory protector plate in place. These screws are really, really small. I suggest you have a little bowl to hold them while you replace the memory.
5. Once the plate is off, gently push the memory levers on either side of the memory card until it pops up, then very gently pull it from its slot.
6. Repeat this for the lower card.
7. Place the lower card at an angle as described by Pirillo in the video. You will hear it click into place, then lower it gently into place and repeat this for the upper card.
8. Replace the protective plate being extremely careful not lose the teeny tiny screws.
9. Replace your battery and power cord and turn the machine on. If you don't see the start up screen (as happened to me the first couple of times, don't panic). Just repeat the steps and make sure you have seated the memory correctly. It took me a few shots to get it right.

Note if you want to avoid messing with the teeny tiny screws more than once, you can test the machine before replacing the battery and the memory protector plate. Just turn your machine over, connect the power cord and turn it on. If it doesn't work correctly, try again until it does.

The end result is that I now have 4 GB of memory. I have plenty of resources to run everything I want and it was was well worth the investment. Makes me wonder why I didn't do it sooner.