I went price digging today for an additional gigabyte of RAM for my MacBook Pro and found some irritating pricing information I thought I'd share.

Crucial is easily my place-of-choice to purchase memory, so I naturally looked there first. At crucial, you select your manufacturer, make and model and they should you compatible upgrades. Here's what I found:

• MacBook Pro 2.16 Ghz 17": $201.39
• MacBook Pro 2.16 Ghz 15": $184.29
• MacBook Pro 2.0 Ghz 15": $189.82
• MacBook Pro 1.83 Ghz 15: $165.86 (on sale)
• MacBook Pro 1.67 Ghz 15: $165.86 (on sale)

So while you might assume that the different prices are a result of different part numbers representing different memory modules with distinct specifications, you'd be wrong. Each of the memory modules represented above has the following specs:

• DDR2 PC2-5300
• CL=5
• UNBUFFERED
• NON-ECC
• DDR2-667
• 1.8V
• 128Meg x 64

So what gives? Why is it that crucial feels the need to keep distinct part numbers on file for something that is clearly not a distinct unit? And why price them all variably? I find this very frustrating. Needless to say if you go Crucial, get the 1.67 Ghz upgrade and expect to work flawlessly in my 2.0 Ghz model for less.

Crucial, while great, doesn't have the best prices though.

NewEgg sells the same crucial memory for $ 149.00, and has other non-name-brand modules for as low as $79.00!

Ramjet prices their upgrade module at $135.00, while Other World Computing ranks the best coming in at $112.00

Apple by the way, prices a similarly spec'd memory module at $300.00 even.