SitDown. StartUp.

About a month ago while in Crested Butte, CO I had an unfortunate incident where I spilled a succulent glass of grapefruit juice on my trackpad. I quickly wiped it up but soon realized that the trackpad was no longer functional.

Even worse, my warranty had expired almost 24 hours before this unfortunate fruit drink compromised my trackpad. I called in to Apple and found out they wanted a cool $500 to replace the trackpad with parts + labor. This had all the workings of another DIY adventure; to see if it could be fun and affordable at the same time.

Surprisingly, replacing the trackpad on my own was pretty cheap:

White 13inch Unibody Trackpad Replacement Part: $59.99
Tri-Wing ScrewDriver: $8.95 (for removing the Apple battery housing)
Online How-To: iFixit
Total cost to replace the Macbook Trackpad: $84.93

Replacing the trackpad is slightly more tricky than installing memory or a hard drive because you’ll need to prop up the trackpad as you position several tiny screws (steady hands required). I recommend magnetic driver bits to catch the screws. You’ll also need to beware of a metal screw that serves as the magnet that makes the trackpad “click.” If you tighten the screw too tightly, you’ll have a trackpad that won’t click.

The finished result is below. You’ll notice that the replacement trackpad was from a white unibody model, so the trackpad is a little mismatched :)

I bought my first Unibody Macbook Pro in February of 2010. For cost savings, I went with the baseline 13 inch model with 2.3Ghz, 4GB of memory, and a 320GB hard drive. After hammering my machine for about a year and downloading tons of software I noticed my baby began to slow down a little.

I did a little research and found that you can spend under $200 to upgrade the memory and hard drive-parts that Apple or a local tech shop would offer for $1,000 or more- by just replacing the parts on your own. Best of all, it was relatively painless and all the parts can be bought on Amazon.

Here is a list of the parts I replaced and how you can supercharge your Macbook:

Upgrading the Hard Drive:
Part: Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid 500GB Solid State Drive
Price: $99.99
Replaces: the 320GB Hard Drive
How-to: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3419

Upgrading the Memory:
Part: Kingston Apple 8GB (2x4GB) 1066MHz DDR3
Price: $87.99
Replaces: the 4GB (2x2GB) memory cards
How-to: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1651#link1

What you’ll need:
Electronic Precision Bit Set
Non-Static Surface (i.e. sweatshirt or towel)
Steady hands

Total base cost to upgrade memory and hard drive: $197.98

Here is an easy way to enable half-star ratings in iTunes using command line prompts in your Mac OSX terminal:

1. Open up your terminal in Mac OSX

2. In your Terminal prompt, type the following: defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUE

3. You’re done. Go for it.