Laptops are not very upgradable computers and in general you stuck with hardware you got inside your laptop. But still there are some components that you can upgrade to improve the performance of you computer. One of these components is memory (RAM). In short, more memory – better computer performance.
There are a lot of different memory brands on the market and sometimes it is very easy to get lost. As a computer technician I would recommend to use Crucial – high quality, not expensive and very reliable computer memory.
Crucial offers you very good tools integrated into their website. These tools will help you to find the correct memory type and correct memory size for your computer.
If you have no idea what kind of memory is installed into your laptop you should use the Crucial system scanner. The Crucial System Scanner takes the guesswork out of upgrading your memory.
The Crucial system scanner will examine you computer and give you an idea what kind of memory you need, what memory size you should use and how many sticks you can install.
More advanced users can use the Crucial Memory Advisor tool. In this case you will have to select the manufacturer, the product line and the model of your laptop manually.
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July 21st, 2007 at 3:08 pm
broc wilde,
PC2100 (DDR266) or PC2700 (DDR333) should be backward compatible with PC1600 (DDR200). I searched the Crucial site for your model and they recommend 256MB PC2700.
Here’s a quote from their FAQ:
Check the BIOS version you have installed on your laptop and upgrade it to the latest version if there is any.
July 20th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
1. My Fujitsu C2010 has 256MB onboard which is a DDR200, recently I bought a 256MB PC2100 (DDR266) and slotted it into the empty memory slot. When I boot and go into BIOS, I only saw 256MB on the memory slot and the onboard memory is “none”. I take out the installed memory and boot again, the BIOS gives me back my onboard memory 256MB. It is designed in such way or something wrong with my installation of new memory where DDR200 and DDR266 can not be used together?
June 1st, 2007 at 7:41 am
question on upgrading cpu on inspiron 8600- currently has 1.3 pentium m- i have a 1.8 and a 1.4 but the motherboard won’t accept either of them – it will power up with error message- “this cpu is not supported the processor code is wrong ” or something to that effect- anyone got an idea- i’d like to toss in the 1.8 should i just ignore the error and use it anyhow?
March 27th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
My Fujitsu C2010 has 256MB onboard which is a DDR200, recently I bought a 256MB PC2100 (DDR266) and slotted it into the empty memory slot. When I boot and go into BIOS, I only saw 256MB on the memory slot and the onboard memory is “none”. I take out the installed memory and boot again, the BIOS gives me back my onboard memory 256MB. It is designed in such way or something wrong with my installation of new memory where DDR200 and DDR266 can not be used together?
Since the user manual states that the maximum memory the laptop can use is 512MB, can i buy a 512MB PC2100 and replace the 256MB PC2100? Which I hope should again disable the memory onboard and i finally get 512MB of RAM.
Thanks for all the articles.
March 8th, 2007 at 8:47 am
I want to replace the memory in my friend’s Dell Inspiron – it’s in the 1200 series – she bought it it 2002. I easily opened the access panel to install one 256 but the other is located under the keyboard. How do I access this correctly? I don’t want to break her laptop. Thanks.
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:25 am
Oops, my bad. Anyway, thanks for your advice.
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:22 am
“In most cases you can mix PC133 and PC100. Nothing bad is going to happen but the PC133 stick will run at 100MHz. If the laptop will not boot up with PC133 module, you’ll have to find PC100.”
Thanks for your answer and advice
I will try that out then.
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:03 am
Joao,
In most cases you can mix PC133 and PC100. Nothing bad is going to happen but the PC133 stick will run at 100MHz. If the laptop will not boot up with PC133 module, you’ll have to find PC100.
February 28th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Hello
I have a 256 MB SDRAM PC133 stick that I want to use along with a 128 MB PC100 in a old Toshiba Tecra 8200.
My question is, if I install both sticks together, can something bad happend? Will the speed of the PC133 stick underclock to 100MHz?
Thanks for all this superb info, and excuse my English.
February 25th, 2007 at 2:14 am
Jason,
Check the memory slot on the bottom of your notebook. If the memory slot on the bottom is empty, you can install up to 1GB memory module into this slot. Vista likes more memory so I would go with 1GB module module. Here’s a disassembly guide for Toshiba Satellite M55, I think this model is similar to Tecra A5. The memory location is shown on the step 2. The second memory slot is located under the keyboard.