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Upgrading laptop memory


Stickman

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My primary machine is an Acer Aspire 5560 laptop. Itâ??s been a faithful workhorse and with a 1.66 Ghz Intel Core Duo it is fast enough for all I do, which is pretty much only word processing, Internet and using Adobe Photoshop. I do NOT play games so a high speed processor is not really important.

 

However, the machine only has 512 MB RAM on board and I want to upgrade as if I run Photoshop and other applications it can slow down.

 

A friend said Kingston is pretty good. I am guessing that 2 GB should do the trick.

 

My questions are relatively simple. Can I put any brand of laptop memory into the machine? Is there any reason why I should put in more or less than 2 GB? Is there any shop that is particularly good for laptop memory?

 

Thanks in advance for any help. BTW, The machine is running Windows XP.

 

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The basics: put in the most memory you can afford. No downside to more memory. Make sure all sticks match, so you'll likely discard the current 512mB stick in there. Also make sure that the new sticks are at least as fast as your current memory. Any brand is fine. Kingston, Patriot and Crucial are good quality.

 

Another tip: set your virtual memory (aka swap space) to 2.0x the size of your RAM. This works better than allowing Windows to control the swap file size IME.

 

Cheers,

SD

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2GB should be more than enough for photoshop, given that the price of ram has fallen so much over the years I would suggest paying the extra few baht and getting 2GB.

 

Kingston are a known and respected memory manufacturer, and no problem with installing it into your Acer, most components are manufactured to ISO standards and are fully interchangable.

 

As for price, just take a stroll around Panthip there are deals to be had every day with prices constantly going down.

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Sorry to interrupt. Got this from the manual:

 

-----------

System memory 256/512 MB of DDR2 533/667 MHz memory, upgradeable

to 4 GB using two soDIMM modules (dual-channel

support)

-------------------

 

Stick,

given that the price of so-Dimm modules is the same between PC2-4200 (533MHz) and PC2-5300 (667MHz) modules you might as well buy PC2-5300 (667MHz).

4GB only makes sense for 64-bit OS. 32-bit OS can only address about 3GB. 32-bit OS would run with 4GB but only use 3GB of it.

As you run XP and there are no 1.5GB modules the economic approach will be 2x 1GB modules.

DDR2 RAM is dirt cheap right now. 2GB won't do much damadge to your wallet.

And it's around long enough that it's no problem using cheap brand, but better not 'no name'. It's more important to use pairs of identical modules to make use of 'Dual Channel'.

 

 

 

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