Thanks for the tip! Lord knows I stay up too late anyway.

anyone use a bluetooth speaker in their car? I don't really use the cell phone in my car -- but a visor mounted speaker looks like a good Justin Case plane for me. decent sound quality , easy buttons --anything else I should be looking for?

I'd like advice about upgrading a 17" MacBook Pro that I've had for two years. I do a lot of audio files and photos and have not only run out of room, but the computer has gotten really slow.

The local Apple-authorized store is recommending that I go with a Hitachi 200GB 2.5" 7200 RMP drive because it's fast and add a Kingston 1GB PC2-5300 SODIMM Memory iMac (2007) in my empty slot. And I'm also going to finally switch to Leopard. Btw, it's not like I know what I'm talking about. I'm just copying from their quote.

What I want is more storage -- this about doubles what I've got, and faster speed. I think this will work, but I also have the option of a 250GB or 320GB hard drive. I do have two large (250GB and 500GB) external hard drives for storing the audio files and photos I don't need as often and for backing up.

Thanks!

Mothra,

Get as much hard drive as you feel you can afford without breaking your budget.

Some alternatives: [link]

I take it your MacBook Pro has SATA?

Thanks, Daniel, and thanks for the links. So you're saying size matters and it's more important than speed? Apple does restrict what size drive can go in the MacBook Pro. I think the max is 320GB.

I do not have SATA. I have two external hard drives and each is connected directly to the computer by USB cable.

I find it hard to believe there would be a max drive capacity for the MacBook pro. Maybe a max physical size, but not a max HDD GB size. There may be some limitation I am not aware of.

Hmmm. See if you can find your model at everymac for us: [link]

Anyway, speed does help. 7800 rpm will feel faster, but not double fast. It all depends on the Gb/s rate.

Also a 7800 rpm drive would probably run hotter and use more power.

Remember, I'm working with an authorized Apple store so while it may be technically possible, Apple won't do it and I wouldn't know how. Plus I still have a year on my warranty and don't want to blow that.

Here's my machine - Apple MacBook Pro "Core Duo" 2.16 17" Specs (MA092LL/A). It was the first one with the dual processor.

So, remembering that you're talking to someone who asks these questions because I have no technical knowledge and I know people here do, let's try this question. If I'm adding a 1G memory chip in the slot that's currently empty that's identical to the one already installed and Apple says they have 3 hard drives I can choose from, the 200GB that runs at 7200 rpm or a standard 250 or 320 GB, which one will give me the best speed and performance? When I say speed, we're talking fewer whirling beachballs, not blazing speed for games.

Generally (and speaking without Mac-specific knowledge), the faster a hard drive spins, the faster data access will be.

When I say speed, we're talking fewer whirling beachballs

This is almost always due to lack of RAM. Going from 1GB to 2GB should help that a lot.

I doubt you'd be able to notice the difference between the 7200 rpm drive and the larger 5400 rpm ones, unless your doing something that does a lot of disk accesses, like some sorts of software development or some kinds of video editing.