Notebook Ram recommendations

Im buying the Dell XPS m1530. Now that Ive made up my mind, can anyone help me chose the right and best ram? although Im just putting a 32 bit vista, I still want the 4 gigs, for future-proofing. in any case its not like its completely wasted, since 1 gig of the 4 will be used for hardware and 3 for the rest, right? It would also be great if any of you could like poit me out how to add the RAM. Ive done it on desktops thousands of times, and I know its a click clack process...is it the same with notebooks?

thanks!

 

basically yes i find it even easier unless it is located under the keyboard though it is smaller so be more carefull!.

 

Well no technically you will only be able to use like 3.4gbs or so. And for the extra 400mbs of ram I would not pay the premium of 4gbs. I'd rather spend less money on 3gbs.

 

yea but when vista sp1 is released it'll recognise all the ram

 

but still not use it all right?
so its kinda pointless? Right?

 

No 32bit OS will ever be able to recognize 4GB's RAM not sp1 or sp100.

 

Just buy 3GB. I bought 3GB for $50 1x1GB 1x2GB. Exact same ram Dell uses and charges 4x as much for. Above is right... 32bit OS will not use all 4GB. 3GB will still give you 2x1GB of dual channel and 1GB not being used in dual channel, but still being used. Vista will be very happy with this.

 

I think he means that Vista x32 SP1 will report the correct amount of RAM (4GB). It'll only be able to use ~3.4 of them, though.

 

But who cares what it reports, as long as the actual usable ram is still the same. So no matter what, you're still only gonna be able to use a little more than 3gb of ram.

So it would be kinda pointless to pay whatever it is to go from 3 to 4gb when you're only getting a couple hundred MB of usable ram.

 

Why is that? Why can only the 64 vista recognize all 4 but the 32 can only see 3 and some change?

 

Could you tell wçme which and where you bought your ram? And where is the ram located in the 1530 (I see you have one too) thanks

 

2^32 = 4.2 billion, which means a memory address that's 32 bits long can only refer to 4.2 billion unique locations (i.e. 4 GB). And hardware such as GPU use up some of this space so the full 4GB is not left for the RAM, closer 3GB. Windows 64 can address more because 2^64 is a much larger number= that many more addresses.

 

Oh ok I get it now, I thought it was all software based, just a limitation. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

I bought mine from NCIX. The deal I got is over but it's still a better price than Dell Maybe check Tigerdirect and Directcanada as well. There is a video on YouTube that shows you where and how to replace the Ram on the 1530. I can't youtube from work but I am sure you can google it. It is very simple. Just a few screws on the bottom of the laptop and the ram is right there. You do not have to dig under the keyboard or anything like that.

1x1GB = $16 AMIR
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=18811&promoid=1001

1x2GB = $60 AMIR
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=22540&vpn=VS2GSDS667D2&manufacture=CORSAIR