Since August this year, I have been pretty much switched to Mac environment. My desktop is more like my gaming machine nowadays. Last week, my Macbook received some upgrades, one planned, one unplanned.
For the unplanned one, it came about when my brother-in-law asked me to buy for him an external portable hard drive for his sales staff. I promptly went to Simlim to get 320GB 2.5” Hitachi HDD and external casing for S$108. After I reached home, I was looking at my Mac and saw the 15GB free space in it. Not much, I thought.
Then, came the idea, why don’t I swap it out? That was exactly what I did for the next couple of hours. I ensured Time Machine has backed up everything I have, turned off my Macbook, pull some screws out, and finally the 120GB hard drive built-in. Within 5 minutes, I have put in a brand-new 320GB harddrive into my Macbook, and boot-up using Mac OS X Leopard DVD. In the installation menu, there was the option to restore system from Time Machine Backup, so I did. There were options to choose backups from the latest to the oldest, somewhere in October 2008, should I choose to. I chose the latest backup of course.
About 45 minutes later, my Macbook system was well restored, and everything ran perfectly as it was before I swapped the hard drive, except now I have over 200GB free space, no installation needed, no configuration needed, nothing. I would say this is simplicity at its best.
The second “upgrade” that I have been planning so far was to get the Applecare warranty extension for the Macbook. Retail price at Apple Store is S$446, very expensive. As I was browsing Hardwarezone forum, I saw this guy who was selling Applecare for S$200, so in the end I decided to transfer him S$200. Minutes later, he sent me the Applecare code, I registered it, and now my Macbook is well covered by warranty well into 2011. 
