Can a 2009 MacBook Pro use more memory than Apple's 'maximum RAM' figure of 8 GB? I have a 2009 MBP with 8GB of RAM. I run Windows under Parallels pretty much all the time (I use Visual Studio for work). I recently installed an SSD to speed it up a bit and its running beautifully. However I could do with having a few extra gigs available to the Windows VM and was wondering if it would be worth buying 2 x 8GB SIMs to enable this. Apple states that the maxiumum for MBPs is 8GB, but I have seen figures online (possibly at OWC) which would suggest that Apple's specs are just guidelines which can be over-ruled.

Does anyone have any experience of 'overloading' their Macs with RAM? OSX can address terabytes of memory so I thought perhaps it was availability of chips which is the limiting factor ...

Update

These are the specs for my Macbook Pro 5,5
As bmike refers to, YMMV, but...

Yes.  I had a 2008 MBP which has a listed 'maximum' of 4GB even though the slots would accept up to 8GB.  This machine worked wonderfully for a couple of years.  It was replaced though still works.

I am not sure if installing above the supported maximum voids your warranty, but it may be something you want to look into.  I just didn't care when I did it.