Gareth Jones

Two weeks ago I picked up an HP Mini 210-2001sa from Argos during their technology sale. It came with a gig of RAM which I was keen to upgrade to the system’s maximum 2GB as soon as possible, so on the way home I stopped by my local IT shop and picked up a stick of 2GB DDR3 RAM from Kingston.

I got home and installed the RAM only to find that the netbook now refused to boot up. All I got was a black screen. Amazed that I had been unlucky enough to pick an incompatible stick of RAM, I went back into town to get a different brand. The shop didn’t have any other brands at that specification so I found myself driving to PC World in Aintree.

PC World had an alternative stick from PNY, which I took to the counter and asked them to check in the netbook before I bought it. The assistant seemed to think I was having a laugh when I told her that some sticks weren’t compatible with different machines, until a colleague of hers confirmed my claim and installed the memory for me. The machine booted up fine and device properties reported 2GB of system RAM – great! However, when I tried shut the machine down I discovered another problem – Windows would power down but the power light stayed on and the machine refused to turn off. I had to turn it off by holding the power button. I restarted the machine and tried again – nope, it wouldn’t turn off.

I took out the memory and retried the original stick and the machine returned to normal. The assistant informed me that they didn’t have any other brands and that maybe my netbook was faulty. I didn’t really believe it was faulty because if it was then it wouldn’t work so perfectly with this original stick. I made my way home.

I got home and opened up the machine. I took the original RAM stick’s details – Elpida 1GB 1Rx8 PC3-10600S-9-10-B1 – and searched for exactly the same thing but a 2GB version instead. This damn netbook was obviously really fussy so I decided that getting exactly the same brand but a bigger version of it would be a fairly safe bet.

I found exactly what I was looking for on eBay, bought it and it arrived a few days later. Crossing my fingers, I turned on the power with the new 2GB stick installed. Nope – black screen again. By now I was getting quite annoyed!

I listed the stick for sale again on eBay (yes, I’m using it again – wish me luck!) for the same price that I had bought it for and hit Google. While plenty of websites and forums discussed upgrading the 210′s RAM, none of them mentioned any particular brands or models that it would actually accept.

Eventually I found Orca Logic, a very knowledgeable memory specialist from Surrey. I phoned them up and explained the trouble I’d had with the netbook and they knew straight away what was wrong. Apparently this netbook (and its Compaq cousins) are incredibly fussy and only accept single bank RAM at very specific speeds. They sent me a 2GB Transcend stick which arrived this morning and I’m pleased to say that, thanks to Orca, I finally have a fully-functional HP Mini with 2GB RAM!

Update: I’ve had a fair bit of traffic looking for instructions on how to install RAM in the 210, so I’ll add some!

To replace the RAM stick in the 210, firstly remove the battery. Once you’ve done that the bottom of the laptop will pop off when you just reach inside the battery slot and pull on it a little: unlike on some other netbooks there are no screws to undo! Once that’s off you should see the RAM stick in question. Replace that with your new stick, pop the case back on and slot in the battery – job done!

In the early hours of this morning I got an email from Quak Multimedia’s GameWrapper alerting me to the fact that someone from Uruguay had become the first person to try to steal some software from me. They tried to steal Quak Wordsearch. They downloaded the wrapper and then ran it on their local machine. In fact, they ran it twice.

Thanks to GameWrapper, they were presented with a message that told them that the request was unauthorised and they were prevented from playing.

GameWrapper not only allows for you to specify who can play your content and who can’t, but it also tracks and records usage around the world and alerts you to any unauthorised attempts to run your content.

GameWrapper isn’t listed on the Quak website as it’s not so much a product but more of a tool that I developed to serve its games, but if you’d like the technology to help protect your content then get in touch.