Mmmmmm....Memory

A friend with a Blue & White G3 saw that 256-meg DIMMs were under $60, and decided it was time to upgrade. We headed off to the local white-box retailer, and picked up a PC-100 CL2 2-2-2 DIMM. Soon she would have half a gig in her desktop.

On installation, we discovered that the machine was only recognizing 128 of the 256 megs. I tried it in different slots, and all by itself, and no dice. The white box retailer suggested it might be because these were "super-high-density", with only 8 modules (of 256 megabits each!), and that her machine might need a 16 x 128 instead. No, we don't carry those.

I've ordered many times from The Chip Merchant and never had any problems, but I'm not wild about their online store, since you can't track your order, and their price on this DIMM was about $12 higher than Crucial, who I had been itching to try out. Add to that Crucial's free 2nd-day Fedex, and it was a done deal. We ordered around 4:15 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, after their shipping deadline for the day, so we expected it to arrive on Monday or Tuesday.

Friday afternoon, I had a call from her -- the memory arrived less than 24 hours later from Idaho! Installation was literally a snap, and she's one happy Mac user. I've used Micron's memory in servers from companies who gouge for RAM and been pleased, so I'll be ordering from Crucial again.