'06 MBP conversion to SSD

Mijn probleem

OS/X "Lion", is a pig, in, uh, Lion's clothing. So firstly, I wanted a performance boost.

Secondly, I was HOPING to see an improvement in battery life. (see Enlightenment).

Lastly, I really feel OS/X has jumped the shark..., and I don't want to purchase another Apple laptop at this time. Buuut..., there aren't any alternatives that are sufficiently compelling at the moment to make me want to spend money on anything new. So..., if I can keep the old thing going a couple more years..., well..., maybe something better will finally appear.

Mijn oplossing

Worked first time! And yes..., the toolkit AND the instructions made things go very smoothly.

But it was a good/bad news thing.

Good: Much faster!

Bad: Severely degraded battery life!

Mijn advies

If you are expecting better battery life, the safest course of action is to not do the conversion. I imagine it's possible there is some combination of exactly the right SSD and usage pattern that might make this a win..., but I wouldn't bet on it.

Just the same, FYI, I went w/ the Crucial M4 128GB..., mostly because it seemed to be the unit that worked the most reliably w/ this vintage Mac. It MAY be that there are other devices for which the battery situation may be better, but I would keep in mind there are a lot of reports of various drives not working with various vintages of MBP.

Also..., I had previously upgraded RAM to the 3GB max for this vintage MBP. Wanted to forestall paging on the SSD as much as possible.

Oh..., yah..., I did the various bits of tuning commonly mentioned for SSDs and OS/X..., and mostly..., none of it does squat for battery life.

I'm gonna leave the SSD installed..., simply because the top priority was addressed, and I mostly use the power adapter anyway. And for those times when I need battery powered portability..., well..., that's what my ANDROID tablet is for... ;)