The time you spend putting a new drive in and putting OS X on it is less than 30 minutes (unless you were born with your thumb in the middle of your palm, that is :)
The money is roughly the half, and as a bonus you also get to keep the drive that came with the computer and use that as backup or additional, external storage, or even sell it to someone to get a few bucks back.
A simple rule of thumb for the Apple customer - NEVER get upgrades along with the order. It's just a waste of your money. You really don't have to be much of a "DIY" to replace memory or storage in a MacBook - they are all much, much more user friendly than your average HP/Dell/Whatever laptop.
No, RAM and hard drive installs are almost always considered user-replaceable parts. I believe the exception to this is replacing the HD in iMacs, where you have to take the screen off.
Nope. Replacing drive and RAM is not a warranty issue. Apple clearly details how to perform it in the user's manual, labelling it all as "user-servicable".
The money is roughly the half, and as a bonus you also get to keep the drive that came with the computer and use that as backup or additional, external storage, or even sell it to someone to get a few bucks back.
A simple rule of thumb for the Apple customer - NEVER get upgrades along with the order. It's just a waste of your money. You really don't have to be much of a "DIY" to replace memory or storage in a MacBook - they are all much, much more user friendly than your average HP/Dell/Whatever laptop.