Tag Archives: RAM

Says 50 – USA Military and Homeland Security consider 2GB RAM for notebooks as “dual use” and sales need to be registered.

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2012 May 09 I thought that if the increase in RAM helped my netbook, why not update my old Toshiba. I did a search and found that my old 2007 Toshiba Satellite A100 TA6 can be upgraded to 4GB of RAM. Originally it came with 1GB, but a couple of years after I got it I upgraded to 2GB, as that was as large a RAM I could get at that time. With this upgrade and my previous hard drive upgrade, I’ll now have a 2007 dual core laptop with 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive that is comparable to present laptops. The only difference is that I’m still running Windows XP (SP2).
I called Staples, but they didn’t have any 2GB PC2-4200 200-PIN DDR2 533MHz SO-DIMM RAM so I went on-line and found a company in the USA called Pro Memory upgrade that had what I needed so I placed my order for 2 sticks of RAM.

The next day I got an email asking me to fill out a form with the title…. “The U.S. Department of Commerce requires adherence to the following guidelines when exporting goods from the United States.” Apparently, a stick of 2GB Ram falls under military use “dual use” and so it has to be registered with numerous USA government agencies, including HomeLand Security. I just wanted to upgrade my laptop, not get involved with any military operation or be subject to military scrutiny and whatever other paranoid operations these military based agencies have. Anyway, I wrote an email back, politely telling them to cancel my order, as I don’t need the RAM that badly.

The irony and utter stupidity of all this is that 95% of all RAM and Hard Drive memory are either made in Thailand or China. Yet these idiotic bureaucrats and military robots focus to maintain control on products specifically designed for public use. Dah!

Says 49 – TuneUp Utilities and upgrade to 2GB RAM for Netbook

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2012 May 04 A couple of days ago I download a trail version of TuneUp Utilities and I was really impressed with how it cleaned up and sped up my Windows operating system on both my Toshiba laptop and my Toshiba Netbook. TuneUp Utilities also monitors and maintains the Windows operating system, and the nice feature is that if you think that it make a mistake, you can easily undo what was done, not like some programs I’ve tried that screwed up the registry to the point where even a system restore couldn’t fix the problems it created.

Another great feature is that it temporarily disables any programs that are running in the background, but that aren’t needed…. including bloatware in Windows 7. That feature is a big part of what makes the computer run faster. It really doesn’t interfere as when you want that program, like MS-Word, it automatically activates it and monitors it and when it is idle for 10 minutes, it disables it without you losing any data. Otherwise, even though you haven’t opened the software, it is running in the background and taking up RAM space that leaves less for other programs to use.

One recommendation the program had for my Netbook was to increase the size of the RAM from 1GB to 2GB. Later I went to Staples Business Depot and bought a 2GB RAM that they just happened to have on sale for $24.95. I went home and installed the RAM and now between the TuneUp Utilities and the 2GB RAM, my netbook that was a snail, is now a speedy rabbit. It used to take about 6-8 minutes to boot up and it would often “hang” when I was using it. Now it fully boots in around 2 ½ minutes and it doesn’t hang like it used to, and it’s a lot faster now, even when I open multiple programs.

Says 44 – MacBook now working

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April 28 Saturday ever since my MacBook bit the dust  Says 42 I’ve kept going back to it to see if it would work. I had a couple of email inquiries about the Macbook that I had posted for sale on Kijiji and today a guy wrote me again, asking me what the model number was. In looking for the number, I decided to give it one more try. I had previously removed the RAM, hard drive and battery, so after re-installing them, I flipped the laptop over, open the cover, pressed the power button,  pressed the keys to reset the PRAM, and voilà…. it sprang to life. I turned it off and on and it was still working. I waited for a half an hour and then turned it on again and it still worked. I then ran a system check and there were no problems. I also ran a hard drive check and that was fine too. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m happy that I have my MacBook back. I wrote the guy back saying that I was no longer selling my Macbook as it was now working.

Says 42 – MacBook issues

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A couple of months ago I bought some used laptop computer RAM from a guy on the internet through Kijiji. Last night I installed a 1GB and 2BG RAM module into my MacBook. I pressed the power button and it didn’t turn on. I checked to see that it was installed properly and tried again, it still didn’t work. Thinking that the RAM was faulty, I then reinstalled the old RAM and tried again. It still wouldn’t turn on. I went back and forth a half a dozen times and still nothing. My MacBook was dead. I was angry and at a loss for words as I just screwed my MacBook that was working fine.

I never turned the MacBook on before I installed the RAM to see if it was working, but I had just used it a couple of days ago, and I even charged up the battery so I had no reason to think there was a problem. So now I’ll have to take it to a computer shop to see what happened. Fuck! It was working great with the 2GB RAM it had, so why did I need to force it to 3 GB, just to max out the specs.

11:30 AM, I called a local computer repair shop and talked to a tech that told me that the problem might be that I needed to reset the computer PRAM settings to accommodate the new RAM. He suggested that I install the old RAM and then reset the PRAM and see if that worked, and he told me how to do it. I tried several times, but it didn’t work. Frustrated, I packed it up and took it down to the shop where he had a look at it and said that it looked like my logic board was toasted and that it would cost close to $1,000.00 to fix it, and that it wasn’t worth it. So now my Macbook that was working great, is basically a pile of junk and only good for parts. I took it home and during the next couple of days I tried different things to see if it would boot up, but nothing worked. Finally I decided to post it on Kijiji and sell it for parts.

I’m feeling at a loss, frustrated and angry in that my wanting the computer to be bigger, better and faster, caused me to turn it into a pile of junk. instead of just accepting it as it was, I destroyed it.

Dah! I just realized that’s also what I’ve been doing to my Body. Ever since I was young, I wanted to be bigger, faster and better. I was/am not happy with the way my Body is as I have judgments and expectations on it. I’m comparing myself to others that I think are better than me. Ahhhh! This also goes back to lost hopes dreams and desires and that I never did the things I wanted in my youth, and now that I’m older, my Body isn’t able to do that, and so I feel cheated and robbed. It’s my Mind that wants my Body to be this way or that way, to do this or that. It’s my Mind that is always nudging and pushing my Body to do more, and then when it does more, my Mind wants even more, as it’s never satisfied. Each time the Body digs deeper to do more, it kills itself little by little in the process, and is able to do even less that it did before.

It’s just like I’m thinking of getting another vehicle that’s bigger and better than the Toyota tercel that I’m now driving as I’m not happy with it. Fuck! This is insane. What’s with this insane drive for more, better, faster?