My new 2 GB chip for my 15″ MacBookPro Intel Core 2 Duo arrived at 9 am, as promised.

Took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to install.

Bonus points for Apple for making it impossible to install RAM in the MacBook Pro without removing the battery first. That’s always instruction #1, but I’m sure many skip that step. You don’t want to accidentally turn on your computer in the middle of installing RAM.

15 minutes to realize that my screwdriver set (shown below) wasn’t going to cut it on those tiny, tight little screws over the RAM plate.

I just couldn’t get enough of a grip on the tiny metal handle to get the screw to turn. Fearing that I would strip the screw if I kept pushing on it, so…

1 hour and 15 minutes out in the holiday traffic to go to CompUSA first to find that they only sell #000 Philips screwdrivers in computer hardware kits that contain the exact same handle as the picture above, then to Home Depot to pick up a 8-in-1 screwdriver set that had a wide easy-grip handle and the #000 tip.

Back home and about 15 minutes to actually pop off those 3 screws, take out a 1 GB chip, replace it with the new 2 GB one, reassemble and restart. The computer started up slowly, I guess all that RAM had to go through whatever checks have to happen. Made me nervous. But eventually the desktop came up and I’m a happy camper again. Right now, I have Parallels, Acrobat 8 Pro, InDesign CS 2, Word 2004, Firefox and ecto running and the page outs are minimal. I’m not avoiding them completely, but it’s much better than it was and besides, I’m stuck with it…3 GB is the max this box can take.