My HDD crashed so i'm thinking of getting a new HDD + RAM instead of running a data recovery on it. (it'll cost pretty much the same and this way i'll get an almost brand new mac)

I've been sifting through the forum and also in mactalk, and found Mactracker. Mactracker tells me that the amount of RAM used by OSX is 2GB but can actually use 3GB. I know that the extra 1GB is probably used by a bootcamp XP/VISTA/7 but is there any way to unlock the capability on OSX so that it uses the full 3GB?

There's no point in getting a 1GB and a 2GB RAM if OSX isn't going to use it. might as well saved a few bucks and buy snow leopard.

umm your harddrive crashed so yea getting a new one would be good "IF" it actually crashed... but why do you need to get new ram??

Originally Posted by DonkeyKong

My HDD crashed so i'm thinking of getting a new HDD + RAM instead of running a data recovery on it. (it'll cost pretty much the same and this way i'll get an almost brand new mac)

I've been sifting through the forum and also in mactalk, and found Mactracker. Mactracker tells me that the amount of RAM used by OSX is 2GB but can actually use 3GB. I know that the extra 1GB is probably used by a bootcamp XP/VISTA/7 but is there any way to unlock the capability on OSX so that it uses the full 3GB?

There's no point in getting a 1GB and a 2GB RAM if OSX isn't going to use it. might as well saved a few bucks and buy snow leopard.

The bold text is totally wrong. Your OS X could fully use 3GB unless you spent some portion of those for VMWare or Parallels..

yea like his post made some confusion cuz the main point about RAM is "Random" lol, if you have 3GB both os' will use up to 3GB while they are running, he made it sound like he was partitioning his ram for bootcamp or something

Originally Posted by DonkeyKong

There's no point in getting a 1GB and a 2GB RAM if OSX isn't going to use it. might as well saved a few bucks and buy snow leopard.

Snow Leopard is really worth it. It is almost as good as advertized.

the guy at the genius bar said it's a HDD issue since he could load up the OSX off an external HDD with no issue.

haha thanks for clearing that up guys. i didn't need to upgrade the RAM but i usually use the macbook for assignments cuz it loads up multiple webpages a bit quicker than my netbook (for obvious reasons..) and MS word 08 takes up a whole load of memory to run so just thought i might give it a bit more room to move. it get's a bit tight on memory when i run photoshop at the same time =S

i'm thinking of partitioning the new 500GB HDD and making a small portion of it win 7 (around.. 20%) and the other humungo part OSX.

ok a follow up Q: is there a general rule of thumb for the amount for partitioning for boot camp?

i havnt found any.. i guess you could called its default 5 or 10GB the rule of thumb... but win7 will require much more so 100GB should work... if not microsoft can screw themselves (greedy b@$7@rd$)