"Open" The Box Before You Buy

I did a post last week about getting extra RAM for my computers. I’m completely pleased with the results. The office desktop now has 3 gigs of RAM and zips along nicely. The home and travel laptop now has 2 gigs and everything seems to have an extra zip in its operation.

In the midst of these changes, I mentioned them to Big Tony and said he should consider adding RAM. “Sounds good; but, I have no clue, so you have to do it.” I casually agreed to become a temporary computer tech for him.

Leaving out a lot of the middle as it is somewhat embarrassing to me – OK – it is funny: I bought two sticks of memory to add to his computer. I opened it up and it was obvious that it wasn’t going to fit in the slots provided. I took a picture of the slots with my digital camera and took it to Best Buy where I’d gotten the sticks. I explained the problem to the Geek Squad guy and showed him the picture I’d taken. “Sir, your problem isn’t the sticks, it’s those slots in the picture, those are for graphics” and something else that I forget, “the memory slots are probably just below where this photo cuts off.”

So I went back to Big Tony’s store, reopened the computer and sure enough, just below the slots that I had memorialized with the camera were slots for RAM and the sticks fit nicely.

Now, to the point of the post. Instead of the normal four slots, there were only two, one in use for a 1 gig stick of RAM. I was expecting to add two sticks to give him 3 total gigs. So, I put one of the sticks in the open slot and powered back up. Still only 1 gig showing (actually only 963, but that’s another story). Figuring that I hadn’t properly seated the stick, I took it out and re-seated it. No dice, still 1 gig showing. So I took the original stick out of it’s slot and put it in the other slot. No computer – the slot was defective.

I assume it was defective when it came out of the factory; and, it wasn’t subject to QA because there was nothing in it to test. Big Tony’s bad luck, he was out of warranty. And although he’d gotten a pretty good deal on the tower, part of the reason apparently was that the manufacturer had skimped on slots – two instead of the normal four.

So the moral of the story, other than not getting me to do your computer upgrading, is to look at the specs before you buy and then testing all the components when you do buy. You are all going to do that, aren’t you? Hey, where is everyone? Hello?