IF YOU OWN a notebook, chances are your performance is diminishing as time passes by, far faster than a desktop. Sadly, this is due to design decisions made in the creation of a notebook you own. Nevertheless, even though our industry would like you to buy notebooks every year, a device that ends up in your hands will be your companion for at least two years.

Even though my home is filled with beloved Kentsfields and Opterons, 8800GTX and HD2900XT boards in multi-GPU mode, the sad truth is that due to nature of my business, I practically live in planes. I write this on June 1st, and I have slept in my own bed this year for a grand total of 54 nights. Since I have to be mobile, I opted to sacrifice performance and stuck myself with integrated graphics and a battery that enables me to catch up what happened last in House, MD., Heroes, Grey's Anatomy and of course, Scrubs. Personal rig of writer of this story is Samsung Q30Plus-SSD, currently one and a half years old. But, even with six-hour battery, this notebook will not surpass 1.9Kg of weight, something that is welcomed if you are carrying your notebook all day long.

As with every subnotebook, this one comes with a deadly flaw - Samsung made a decision to integrate 256MB of DDR2-533 memory onto the motherboard, and putting a single SO-DIMM for upgrade purposes. To make the matters more interesting, official site will claim - even today - that this notebook cannot be upgraded with more than 512MB of memory, making a grand total of 768MB. Luckily, in this industry nothing is set in stone. When I talked to Samsung tech support, technician was not sure will the board support more than 512MB module or not. Like we have already wrote - nothing is set in stone, so yours truly ordered 2GB DDR2-667 Value stick from Corsair.

The memory
The memory part is called rather boringly, Corsair VS2GDS667D2. This 200-pin SO-DIMM module is checked for compatibility with over than 50 different hardware configurations, and it should be recognised by almost all DDR2-powered notebooks on the market, if not all of them (that use regular SO-DIMM format). Having 2GB of system will make your system fly, and if you decide to upgrade or already have Hasta la Vista installed. No, ReadyFlash will not save you, regardless of amount of hype that USB flash manufacturers put into media.

Best part of this whole upgrade was the price. Hardware vendors such as big tier one companies always like to rip off people over the price of upgrades. I remember that not one Tier 1 vendor used to charge no less than 370 dollars for a single DIMM, offering higher latencies, resulting in slower performance than world's fastest memory of the same capacity and format. To get back to the upgrade part, next part shows how complicated it was to remove the memory and install new one. Current price of this module is around 150 USD.

Upgrade part

Upgrading Samsung notebook such as this one is very simple, and does not require anything more than a Philips (cross-head) screwdriver. We turned the notebook on the belly, and removed the battery. We started unscrewing marked screws afterwards, and in moments' time, we were turning the laptop on its back again. Some hassle with keyboard removing is guaranteed, and the interesting part followed.

Unscrewing can be so easy...in our case, six screws

Freeing up keyboard takes couple of seconds - most subnotebooks have similar configuration

Old memory goes to the can, or eBay. How much to charge for 256MB DDR2-533 DIMM... $5?

We had to be cautious not to cause break or tear of the cable that connects the keyboard with the motherboard, since re-fitting process would take quite a lot of nerves. Less than six minutes after first screw was removed from the back of this notebook, memory was exchanged, notebook was re-assembled and pressing the blue button on the right resulted in an instant boot, with all the memory recognised. This only goes to show that you should not blindly trust notebook manufacturers, since sometimes, even they cannot foresee the ways industry will move.

In short

This is it - 2GB are now happily installed and no need for apps to grab into virtual memory on puny 32GB SSD drive

Overall, this Samsung got a new life. With 2.25 GB of memory, Photoshop with more than one picture is no longer a dream; same thing applies for multi-tasking. Corsair's memory proved to be perfectly compatible, even though this might not be the case with all other notebooks. If your notebook manufacturer is charging an arm and a leg for memory upgrade or doubts memory you can put in your notebook, think twice and do some research. µ

Bartender's Verdict