Computer Advice: RAM upgrade

Hi girls and boys, hope you are all well.

My laptop, a Toshiba Satellite Pro A40, is a sturdy beast. But its patheticly slow.

So I figured it would benefit from getting a RAM upgrade from its current 256 MB to 1GB. But I know nothing about upgrading memory, so I need some advice;

Whats a good product? Is 1GB too much? How is it done? How much can I expect to pay?

Ta

Matt

[TSM]

go to crucial.com/uk

its the best place, put in the comp type and they send you memory that they guarantee will work with your comp, free delivery i think too.

Originally Posted by alpinestarhero

Hi girls and boys, hope you are all well.

My laptop, a Toshiba Satellite Pro A40, is a sturdy beast. But its patheticly slow.

So I figured it would benefit from getting a RAM upgrade from its current 256 MB to 1GB. But I know nothing about upgrading memory, so I need some advice;

Whats a good product? Is 1GB too much? How is it done? How much can I expect to pay?

Ta

Matt

Go to Crucial Memory and use there system scanner, or select your laptop from the drop down boxes. It will tell you what you need, the prices and what your laptop can take. it's a very good site.

You can never have enough memory in my opinion.

EDIT: See, if I'd had more memory I'd have beaten TSM to it

[TSM]

Originally Posted by rigor

Go to Crucial Memory and use there system scanner, or select your laptop from the drop down boxes. It will tell you what you need, the prices and what your laptop can take. it's a very good site.

You can never have enough memory in my opinion.

you can apparently, tooo much slows down the comp under certain circumstances, also for a laptop its a problem as when it needs to hibernate more data needs to be written to disk before its turned off.

No a biggy though. Just get 1GB total ram or more at least.

Ok, thanks guys. I saw this website, but I'm always iffy about buying from things I havnt heard of.

Matt

Depends on the OS too, Old windows 98 would only address about 512 mb of ram, and I think XP's best is a max of 2GB. Some laptops will only support a limited amount of memory, due to physical and hardware constraints, but the website should tell you that. I tend to use the memory scanner to find out the memory model number and then have a search about on ebay and stuff, then you can get it for about half the price.

Originally Posted by Grinch

Depends on the OS too, Old windows 98 would only address about 512 mb of ram, and I think XP's best is a max of 2GB. Some laptops will only support a limited amount of memory, due to physical and hardware constraints, but the website should tell you that. I tend to use the memory scanner to find out the memory model number and then have a search about on ebay and stuff, then you can get it for about half the price.

I used the memory scanner at crucial.com, it tells me that i have 256 mb in one slot, with another slot free. It then tells me i can stick in 1 gb in the free slot, or stick in two 1 gb wotsits (replacing the 256 mb)

I'll just stick in 1 x 1gb, thats £60. Quite reasonable I think, i was expecting it to cost a fair bit more

Only thing is

how to get the memory in. What size hammer?

Matt

little screw fixed door underneath, then slip yer stick in at a slight angle (ooh-eer) and push it down flat till the little clips either side latch on.

EDIT: there's probably a little picture on the door flap thingy you want to unscrew, it's likely a rectangle with little legs coming out

EDIT 2: you'll want a small-ish philips head screw driver for the A40 if I remember correctly

EDIT 3: it'll only go in one way, there's a little notch on the contact side of the memory stick that's slightly off-centre, if it don't fit, don't force it

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

little screw fixed door underneath, then slip yer stick in at a slight angle (ooh-eer) and push it down flat till the little clips either side latch on.

Next to the battery slot?

Matt

Originally Posted by alpinestarhero

I used the memory scanner at crucial.com, it tells me that i have 256 mb in one slot, with another slot free. It then tells me i can stick in 1 gb in the free slot, or stick in two 1 gb wotsits (replacing the 256 mb)

I'll just stick in 1 x 1gb, thats £60. Quite reasonable I think, i was expecting it to cost a fair bit more

Only thing is

how to get the memory in. What size hammer?

Matt

Did it give you the memory model number?