Hi

My PC laptop died (the motherboard) so I am picking up a good deal on a 2nd hand macbook pro, but I was wondering if I could butcher any parts from the PC to upgrade it, such as the blue ray drive and memory, or would it not be possible?

Blu-ray is not supported by apple (yet) and the memory is very dependent on what sort of modules are in the PC (but probably the wrong ones, as is the law of sod)….

the windows laptop probably has a tray load blueray? macs use slot load so may have an issue even if you can find some drivers that would make it work.

blueray isn’t all that when flash memory is so cheap. if you want to up the spec of your macbook then ram is cheap (max 8gb) hard drives are easy to swap out for a bigger one or SSD. you can even get a kit from OWC to fit an extra ssd in the cd/dvd slot.

It looks like I might be able to use the old harddrive as an external drive using a cady which would be good, maybe I could mount the blue ray in a similar way!

Boot camp the mac to boot windows when you need it and use the bluray drive in an external caddy.

I really don’t understand why people BootCamp Macs. It’s like buying a Porsche and jamming a pushrod V8 in the back.

I really don’t understand why people BootCamp Macs. It’s like buying a Porsche and jamming a pushrod V8 in the back.

No it isn’t.

No it isn’t.

The ultimate retort.
… let’s continue this like toddlers.

Yes it is.

Yes it is.

Poo face!

…but he is right.

maybe I could mount the blue ray in a similar way!

I was wondering the same, something like http://www.amazon.co.uk/Laptop-Drive-External-Caddy-Case/dp/B003AV5SPS

Don’t have a scooby whether it’d work or not though.

I really don’t understand why people BootCamp Macs. It’s like buying a Porsche and jamming a pushrod V8 in the back.

Analogy failure aside, I’ve never understood that either. If you want to run Windows, what you want there is a PC; if you want OSX then you should get a Mac.

I can understand the logic of wanting to run OSX on a PC, given that the PC hardware is likely to be significantly cheaper; the other way round though, that’s essentially a PC with a 30% price premium. Madness.

(As a geek, I can see the appeal in trying to get it to work – I once worked in a department where building multiboot systems was a competitive sport – but as a genuine productive solution, no)

Macs don’t play well with playing movies from external DVD or Bluerays. I found this out when I installed a MCE caddy in the drive bay for a second hard drive, and the original superdrive in an external caddy.

There was software provided as a workaround, but was flakey at best. Blueray … I’ve never seen any solutions and Im pretty sure its to do with the licensing issues.

If its the older non unibody design, it can be a complete PITA to get the keyboard off, and back on without unsettling things.

Regards bootcamp, I have to run a windows environment to allow remote desktop, along with other window specific software. Don’t even bother with Bootcamp, your mac will run at the temperature of the sun, chew through the battery, run at half speed and sound like a 747 on takeoff. Invest in Parallels or similar, run in coherence and be very very happy with the results.

Surely Windows + MacOS on a Mac is two machines in one, rather than two machines in two, and hence cheaper for more flexibility?

Funny, I was lead to believe by the Apple advocates that if you had OSX then you had the perfect OS, why on Earth would you ever need Windows?

Certainly, I can hand on heart say that in the, what, 20 years I’ve been playing and working with Windows, I’ve never looked at a PC and thought “you know, what I really need here is a MacOS.”

Linux, occasionally. DOS, on a daily basis. MacOS, never.

Not that I’m saying it’s a bad OS, it’s fantastic. I’ve just never been in a situation where I’ve needed it.

I don’t want to run Windows, I want run use my hard drive and bluray from my old laptop as external devices in a caddy as per Cougars suggestion and if possible stick the memory from my laptop into the mac.

You can connect the Blu-ray no problem, the issue is if you can play back the content.

As above first option is to run a virtual or boot camp windows install (again … virtual would be my recommendation). Higher chance of an available driver, and more software options.

Option two is IF (and its a big if) the MAC OS recognises / supports the drive then you will need to invest in the appropriate software to read and decode the DVD / Blu-ray. I was supplied with “vlc media player” which while buggy was useable for the external super drive. No promises if it works with Blu-rays (as given previously, its an unsupported format by Apple).

External Hard drives, no problem but you will no doubt need to reformat them for read / write if they are NTFS. Fat32 will allow cross platform read and write, while Journaled will be Mac compatible. You can also boot from USB on an apple so good idea to partition and clone a hard drive copy, or use as a Time machine backup.

Regards memory, if you click on the Apple logo top left of the screen, select About this Mac, scroll down to memory it will tell you what it is presently running. Pre unibodies most ran DDR2, then post uni went to DDR3. They are not interchangeable. While Macs are more sensitive to clock and latency speeds, as a general rule if your existing memory is equal or higher in clock speed, it MAY work.

The crucial website also has a memory finder based on Machine model which you could use.

Re the OS vs Windows flame wars, i prefer the Mac hardware (im a sucker for bling) and the reduced system threat level, Given that I need to integrate into an existing windows server system then a virtual Windows system keeps things very simple. Also as per the OP I came from a dead Win. system so had a high level of investment in Win. software. Apple at least gives me the flexibility to continue to run this.

Nothings perfect … thats why we modify 🙂

Look lets be straight there is nothing you can salvage from your old machine to mac book pro that would be cost effective, your best chance is sell your items and use money to purchase mac goodies. The current pro’s are user friendly and to change hard drive also Memory is a doddle and really cheap.