> I suspect the vast majority of people who pay for the upgrades are businesses or consultants where the Apple upgrade price is fairly negligible compared to co

> I suspect the vast majority of people who pay for the upgrades are businesses or consultants where the Apple upgrade price is fairly negligible compared to cost of their professional time. Yes exactly. The premium on my time has been gradually edging out in my priorities. I'd rather pay a little extra to have something already there than spend the same amount in my own time instead. It's a fair tradeoff. "But there's not much time involved, it's a ripoff," say many. But there is time involved for people who don't regularly upgrade computers. Figuring out what to buy, the best place to buy it, then the process of doing the upgrade yourself (if it's possible) is not a trivial amount of time unless you do this often enough. Let's say you can upgrade a hard drive in 2 hours total, which is conservative -- the total time of researching what to buy, reading how to install it, ordering it, opening the package, putting in the drive, configuring the stuff you need to do, if necessary. Even at two hours, for my wage, that's about $200 of my time. I'd rather just spend the $200 or even a little more to not deal with it. And in reality, for me at least, it would take more than 2 hours of my time all-in anyway.