15-inch Powerbook RAM

Patriot DDR RAMFor some reason Apple’s 15-inch Powerbook is notorious for not liking certain DIMM modules, and I have been meaning to upgrade my main Macintosh, which is of course a 1.5GHz Powerbook. After some trepidation and research on Google, I felt pretty confident in purchasing this 1 Gigabyte DDR DIMM module, which was the cheapest I could find on NewEgg.com. As it turned out the comment reviews on NewEgg were actually correct. The Patriot DIMM worked fine on my Powerbook and I have had no problems with the computer at all since installing it.

I’m not sure if this is true or not, but from I have read, it appears that the less accessible DIMM slot is the most compatible with generic memory. So if you buy a module and not sure if it is compatible try installing it in the bottom most slot. Of course be careful, as the 15-inch Powerbook is also known for having weak memory slots that will break if pushed too hard.

Right now I have the Patriot DIMM in the less accessible slot and a 512MB PNY DIMM in the other slot. The PNY DIMM I got from a retail store and is not part of the original Apple installed memory.

The Powerbook is slightly faster than before now with 1.5GB of memory. But the improvement is not as dramatic as passing 512MB of memory. So if you have 768MB or 1 GB total, don’t expect much improvement, unless you are running lots of applications at once.