Saturday 27 March 2010

Crucial Technology - macbook, laptop


I purchased this product from Amazon and it was shipped in 2 hours.



You need to make sure you follow these steps before you purchase additional memory, otherwise you may landup purchasing an incompatible RAM.



1. Go to the corsair website.



2. Select memory configurator on the top right side.



3. Select Laptop and then the brand.



4. Then enter the model (normally found at the bottom of the laptop).



5. If asked for a chipset along with the model, then right click on My computer -> Properties -> hardware -> device manager.



6. Make it a point to open your laptop covering above your RAM and check the RAM model.



7. Do not trust your manufacturer manual. In my case, it was mentioned chipset 943 and RAM PC2-4200. After performing steps 5 & 6, I noticed my chipset was 945 and RAM PC2-5300.



8. Step 6 is also important, because you will have an idea about the available slots. In my case I had to increase from 1GB to 2GB. But I had 2 slots covered with 512MB each. So I had to purchase 2 * 1 GB.



Hope this review was helpful. Crucial 2GB Set(2x1GB) 200-Pin PC2 5300 667Mhz SODIMM DDR2 RAM

I ordered this through Amazon, which passed the correct order onto Crucial. Crucial shipped me DIMM instead of SODIMM. After phoning them and being left on hold for 40 minutes, they:

1) refused to acknowledge they had made a mistake (despite the shipping order enclosed with ram providing all the correct order details)

2) insisted that I ship the ram back AT MY EXPENSE

3) would not ship me the correct ram at the price advertized on Amazon -- they wanted to charge $12 more

Altogether a foul experience. Avoid Crucial!!!!!!!!!!!!

Compare these prices with those of a year or two ago, or for that matter with the same memory at Apple Store. These boards from Crucial are a mere fraction of the cost and are assembled in America to boot! (The ones installed by Apple are Korean.) Even if you have someone else do the installation, this is as safe and sensible a purchase as you're likely to make.



Advantages: 1. Low-cost doubling of your computer's memory. 2. They fit my 13" Macbook (midsummer '07 edition). 3. The computer instantly saw them.



Potential negatives: 1. Unlike an iMac or Mac desktop, which has just one cache to fill, the Mac notebook size requires purchasing two circuit boards and throwing out the old ones. 2. These gave me just a bit more trouble than previous installations of memory for an iBook. Desk-top installations are a cinch, but with the nano spaces of the Macbook it helps to have good light along with a jeweler's tools, eyes and hand coordination (one of the mite-sized screws refused to come out, and then another objected to going back in, making it an hour-long project).



Is there an immediate, dramatic difference in speed and efficiency? I didn't even notice dramatic improvement after installing the latest Airport Extreme with "n" protocol, despite Apple's claims of quadrupling internet speed. With some of these things, it's the thought that counts.

This review is for 2GB (2x 1GB sticks) of Crucial 200-Pin DDR2 SODIMM (PC2 5300 / DDR2-667) dual channel laptop memory. The memory was installed and utilized in a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop (Core Duo T2500) that was manufactured mid-2006, and uses Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition (XP SP-2) as the main operating system.



The installation was painless and took less than 5 minutes due to the easy access to the slots. I used nitrile rubber gloves to handle the memory in an effort to minimize contamination and static electricity. Once installed, the BIOS will ask you to confirm the changes to the memory capacity. I verified that the SODIMM sticks were indeed DDR2-667 / 2GB total.



Performance-wise, I did not notice any differences in boot-up or loading of applications using the Crucial RAM over the original 1GB (512MB x2 DDR2-533). I did want 2GB of RAM to prevent XP from using the swap file when using memory intensive applications.



Cost-wise, Newegg offered this "kit" at the lowest price and I am amazed at how inexpensive the memory was for a 2-year old laptop. I highly recommend you check and see how much it would cost to max out the RAM in your laptop because it is worth it. 1-1.5 GB will make life easier in XP, but 2GB (the max for my E1505) is icing on the cake. 512MB of RAM for XP is really pushing it but still feasible.



Pros: Inexpensive, Crucial stands for high quality / lifetime warranty against defects, decent performance, and painless installation.



Cons: Not as fast as the high-performance brands (Mushkin, OCZ) but there are other real bottlenecks in a laptop besides the RAM (such as video card, CPU, hard drive, motherboard chipsets).



Overall: The Crucial 2GB kit offers significant value and if I had realized it was so inexpensive, I would have upgraded years ago. - Laptop - Macbook - Crucial - Ddr2 Memory'


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