How does Apple make its profits? First off, we’re glad they’re making them. It keeps a vendor healthy and innovative. But since the Apple Store is the new mecca for Mac users, it’s a good place to spy where the profits are being produced. The latest MacBooks have a $200 example of extra profit: Disk drive upgrades.

A modest bump on Macbooks from 160 GB to 320 GB drives the price up by $200. Paying an extra $200 for a drive that costs under $100 certainly makes the installation sound like it should be expensive and difficult. But upgrading hard drives is easier than it’s ever been for a Mac in the Macbooks. Apple has put the disk drive access under an easy-to-snap-off cover.

Save the money and order a drive from a third party company like Other World Computing. Let the customers who don’t enjoy integrating to save money pay the extra price. As Alan Dang says in the Tom’s Hardware blog,

In general, these [included Macbook drives] are run-of-the-mill notebook drives, and we recommend upgrading to aftermarket drives. Time Machine makes it extremely straightforward to migrate your computer from one drive to another (provided that you have an external drive). One good choice is the Seagate Momentus 7200.4.

If you really must have Apple integrate a bigger drive, consider jumping up to the 2.4 GHz model of the Macbook Aluminum. It’s got 20 percent more horsepower, but the disk drive adds another 90GB of storage. Oh, and that’s an extra $400. You won’t be able to boost the power of the Macbook, but you can always add more storage.