Some readers may remember when we bought our first Acer laptops several years ago. Those laptops ran great, and are still running superlatively well, considering their age. However, they are rather "chunky monkey" now, and a bit slow, in comparison to all the new laptops available.
Last week, on October 22nd, 2009, Windows 7 was officially released. Brian had been using Windows 7 Beta and various test releases, helping find and sort out the bugs, and he was loving it. So, this was a good time for us to upgrade a bit. I purchased a very small Acer Aspire One D250 netbook that had Windows 7 Starter edition installed (They had only one in stock, but Brian will be upgrading soon, too).
Sleek New Aspire One"
However, it ships with just 1 GB of RAM memory, but the pc was upgradable to two gigs. So while at the shop, I asked for extra ram that I would add myself, since the shop would have charged extra to install it.
Anyway - we got the box home, and was very happy with my purchase as I extracted the little machine from its box. It booted up really quickly, and the OS walked me through the initial set up for preferences.
Brian and I were both excited as I made a few customizations: downloading and installing Fire Fox since I loathe Internet Explorer, and removing the pre-packaged McAfee Antivirus and installing AVG Free, for example. Then I was pretty much good to go.
Time to upgrade my RAM. Between the two of us, we scoured the internet looking for where the RAM was located in my particular laptop. We found lots of tutorials for the Acer Aspire One series, all of which indicated that we had to unscrew eight screws in the back, remove the keyboard, carefully remove wires, etc..
I was not convinced, and we held off on doing all this. Finally, I found one little bit of information after one and a half hours of scouring. It seems that there is only one memory slot, not two. And to upgrade the ram, it meant that I had to take out the 1gb ram and insert a 2gb ram. Sure enough, I checked the ram I'd purchased, and it was 2 gigs, not one.
And, the slot for the ram was very conveniently located on the back of the pc, requiring just the removal of one screw.
And requiring that I break the seal that said, "Warrant null and void if this seal is broken".
Discounting the 1.5 hours spent researching, it only took about three minutes to upgrade my RAM!
So, as I mentioned, it's running Windows 7 Starter, in Japanese. The Nihongo I can live with - it's about time I had an all-Japanese OS. But, the Starter edition does not even let the user change the desktop image. I will be stuck with a green Windows window image until some genius devises a program or power toy to help me change it!
17 comments:
Good job! Especially the part about perservering until you found the right (easy) way to do it!
Oh - BTW - a computer question. I figure you'd know if anyone does. Has anyone made a program to allow our BLOGs to be printable ... just the pix and text, not the rest of the stuff that shows on the screen? I know, "why would anybody want old fashioned print?" But, some of us dinosaurs do ... thanks!
what is the spec of the memory in the laptop??
Hi Dessie
This laptop (a small 'netbook') comes with 1gb ram, and is upgradable to a max of 2gb.
There is only one memory slot, so you have to buy a 2gb mem, and replace the 1gb with the 2gb; then of course you are left with the 1gb leftover.
The documentation that came with the laptop was not helpful. I assumed that the cover in the center was for memory but the plate was reluctant to lift off. After seeing this site I tried it again but this time I flexed the cover in the center and it popped off ok. Thank you for posting your discovery.
excelen blog, i was trying to find a blog like this. so, there's only one slots available on this lap top.
thanks
Thanks for commenting on my blog - I'm so glad to know that one of my usually boring posts was useful! Enjoy your Acer Aspire One!
thanks, men, I've spent two hours one the net looking how to upgrade my new d250.
By the way in the following site says it has two slots of 2gb each up to 4gb total. I imagine it's wrong.
http://www.memoryupgrade.pro/acer-memory-aspire-aspire-one-d250--101.html
regards
Raul
This is exactly the information was looking for. I had my new 2 gb memory ready and was looking at the doors on the back of my new Acer 250-1633, wondering which to open. You'd THINK an on-line manual or something would tell...nope, I couldn't find anything to help....then I discovered your blog...thanks so much.
Raul - everything I found indicates that the laptop can only handle 2gbs, and for a netbook that sounds right.
Sara - yeah, you'd think it would be in a manual, right? I also checked the manual, user's guide, every site that talked about upgrading but could just not find out how!
i need to install the 2Gb memory upgrade so that i can install AutoCAD...however AutoCAD requires a minimum of 2G RAM to even operate, will this interfere with the day to day operation of my computer? and is there another way to Install AutoCAD without it taking up so much memory all the time?
noice!!!! this is still relevant as i just bought one for my daughter and a 2 gb mushkin module ... but there is nothing in manuals or online that show you how or where ... cept here .. thanks!
Thanks for commenting Ed - I'm so glad it proved helpful. It took me hours to figure it out!
Hi Shane -
This is a netbook, and as such, really can't handle demanding software. I'm running Photoshop Elements 8, and it runs great for editing basic photos, but is slows down when I've got something with a lot of layers.
Sorry, I'm not sure about the requirements of AutoCAD, but maybe it's too demanding for a little netbook?
Thank You soooo much!
What kind of 2GB RAM to buy? Or it Doesn't matter?
The info I've seen says that it comes with a stock 1GB of DDR2-533/PC2-4200 module SDRAM.
You can upgrade to 2GB of the same, or can get a little better I/O.... by going to 2GB of DDR2-667/PC2-5300 module.
They are SO-DIMMs.. 200-pin slots.
I just bought an Acer D250, also think it needs an upgrade to 2 G of RAM, I hope this info. is still current for my model.
8/10/2010.
I just completed a memory upgrade on my Acer Aspire one D250 which I bought almost a year ago. I successfully upgraded from the current 1GB to 2 GB PC2-6400 CL5 200-Pin SODIMM (Kingston). This in effect means that we can go higher than just 667MHz as per Chris's note above. This mem plate is 880 MHz and touch wood, all seems to be working fine. Can anyone advise if I am now on a time bomb with this? Should I rather go back to 667 MHz, or could others upgrade same in future? Please let me know if there is any danger as I dearly love this little book and do not want to damage it!
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