Gadgetoid

gadg-et-oid [gaj-it-oid]

-adjective

1. having the characteristics or form of a gadget;
resembling a mechanical contrivance or device.

Crucial iMac 4Gb RAM

I’m sure most people are already well aware of Apple’s obscene RAM pricing, I have a tendency to rant about it from time to time. If you’re looking to buy a shiny new iMac then avoid the temptation to click that £94 upgrade to 4GB and bear with me a moment.

£94 for 4GB is about double what it’s worth, this isn’t too bad in itself but you have to be wary that you are, in fact, swapping from 2GB to 4Gb meaning that you’re actually paying that extra £94 for only 2GB extra.

That’s £47 per 1GB stick of RAM.

Multiply that by 4 and you have a whopping £188 cost for the pleasure of having 4GB of RAM installed in your iMac from the word go. That’s an insane price for something that costs only £45.81 elsewhere.

4.1 times more expensive, if you must know!

Not only that! But upgrading AFTER you purchase leaves you with two 1gb sticks of DDR2 RAM which you can shove into another computer or sell on EBay.

So, what’s it gonna’ be? 4GB RAM for £94 or 4GB + 2GB RAM for £46?

I thought so.

My ongoing crusade against Apple will probably never amount to anything remotely resembling success, but I have a strong objection to both their upgrade prices and spare/upgrade parts prices. A 250GB hard drive upgrade for the MacBook Pro, for example, costs about £70 for Apple and will cost you a further £60ish for installation unless you’re brave enough to attempt it yourself.

Yes. I recently investigated the cost of upgrading the paltry 120GB hard drive in my MacBook to 320GB. Now a 320GB, 7200RPM hard drive can be had for about £60-£70 and they wanted to sell me a 250GB one, with a spindle speed of 5200RPM no doubt, for the same price. Factor in installation and we’re talking over £130 for either option. Hint: a 1TB external hard drive can be had for about £90.

Why these disgusting prices when the Macs have already gained notoriety as premium products simply by their base purchase price alone? I find it hard to believe that Apple do anything more than buy off the shelf hard drives in bulk and re-sell them to their customers at absurdly inflated prices. There’s no need to shaft your customers over once they’ve bought into Mac, Apple. Stop it.

Monday, October 27th, 2008, Blog.