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Crucial System Scanner Finds Compatible Upgrades Share This on LinkedIn   Share This on Google   Tweet This   Forward This

19 December 2014

Crucial, which makes memory and solid state drives, has launched its System Scanner software to provide "the easiest way to find compatible upgrades for your system."

The software scans your computer system to determine which Crucial products are available for your system even if you don't know anything about your computer.

If you do know your computer's manufacturer, product line, model, RAM and hard disk, you can use the links to list either RAM or SSDs compatible with your system.

We downloaded the app (the Mac OS version was downloaded to our MacBook Pro) and ran it on a couple of our systems here. It read the host system specs and took us to a page that listed compatible RAM upgrades and SSDs for that systems. Very simple.

Tom's Hardware, which recently evaluated the Best SSDs For The Money, listed Crucial SSDs as best budget buys.

NOT A MOOT QUESTION

We've been researching the issue after running Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite on a 13-inch MacBook Pro 8,1 with the stock 4-GB RAM and 320-GB hard drive.

Currently the system runs Lightroom 5, DxO OpticsPro 10, Exposure 7 and various Photoshop versions. There are some small issues but it's functional, if not fast.

Upgrades can solve that problem.

But there seems to be some controversy about which upgrade makes the most difference for Yosemite. What we've read suggests replacing the HD with an SDD makes a significant difference, whereas upgrading RAM does not.

Memory management changed substantially with OS 10.9 Mavericks, so there's some merit to that argument that there certainly never used to be. Adding RAM to a Mavericks system might not improve performance. Adding an SSD might.

On our system, for example, getting to 8-GB would cost about $100 and installing a 500-GB SSD would be another $250.

In a perfect world, you just spring for both and not look back. But what fun would that be?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We're evaluating the upgrade as a story idea. Let us know about your upgrade experience or if you'd like to know which upgrade path provides the most bang for the buck.


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