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We're looking to upgrade the RAM on an older (about 3 years) laptop we have at home. It's a HP Pavilion ze4300, if that helps. Found some RAM on eBay but we're confused about getting exactly what we need for this particular laptop. The current RAM and any other RAM we can find for this specific model is labelled PC2100 SO DIMM, we've found others that are the same except for the PC____ bit. What exactly does this figure mean and does it have to be the same? Could we buy RAM that was labelled PC4200?

Once again, excuse my largely technologically-challenged nature.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. - Oscar Wilde

best to find the manual for the motherboard in the laptop or the manual for the laptop its self. alot of them will say how what type of ram can be used.

but the difference between pc2100 and pc4200 is its speed. but if you cant find what your pc will support, your best getting pc2100 again and just getting a higher ram amount. so if it has 256mb of pc2100, try to find 512mb of pc2100

Fish tanks are an expensive addiction

SODIMM is the form factor of the memory itself. It stands for Small Outline Dual Inline Memory Module. It means just that, it's a smaller, low power version of desktop RAM basically. Used in laptops where space and power are concerns.

As for the PC____ part, this dictates speed, and in particular, theoretical maximum bandwidth in mb/sec. Therefore, PC2100 has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 2100mb per second.

Where you see DDR___ or DDR2____ this is also speed, but in clock speed, or MHZ. If you see DDR400 you'll have RAM that runs at (effective) 400mhz. Usually these numbers go hand in hand and aren't seen apart from their pairings. PC2100 is also DDR266, PC3200 is also DDR400 etc etc etc.

Now that i've thoroughly confused you, it's best to (as monkeyboy stated) to find out what your motherboard can take, and go with the fastest you can. But my inkling is that PC2100 is all you'll be able to do given that the computer is 3 years old. You can undoubtedly upgrade the size, as laptops are rarely come chock full o memory from the factory. A handy tool to find out your maximum capacity is Everest Home Edition.

This handy utility will tell you all you need to know and more than you care about your computer. When you fire up the program, click on "motherboard" on the right hand pane. Then scroll down to the bottom to find out how many physical ram slots you have. This will tell you if you can just match whatever module you have in there or need to get new, bigger modules.

Also on the "memory" option it will give you brand name, model number, manufacturer and speeds of your currently installed RAM.

Generally you want to match modules for optimal performance, but then again it might not matter, the lappy's three years old!!

As I PC Sales Associate, the website I commonly refer people to is http://www.crucial.com . It allows you to plug in what your PC's make and model is, and then tell you what kind of RAM you can get, how much, if you and mix and match, and other common questions. I love this site, and hopefully it can help you out.

Edit: I went through the process for you, and here's the link to your PC: http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Pavilion+ze4300+Series. I hope it helps!

fallout... that site is killer thanks. i know i'm going to put it to use

Fish tanks are an expensive addiction

Those sites told us exactly what we needed to know, thanks!

Now to work out whether it's actually worth trying to make this thing run faster, or whether it would be better to just buy a newer one.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. - Oscar Wilde

Digging up generic specs on your model, I believe you can gain a noticeable performance boost by increasing your RAM. It's got a decent feature set and connector options. The wireless will be inherently slow unless you get a wireless slot card, as it's natively using the 802.11b protocall.

Windows XP is a RAM hog, and 256 is plain unacceptable. 512 would boost your performance a bit, with 1gb being ideal.

I say go for it, not time for the scrap heap yet!

Thanks Tim. This is my fiance's computer now (used to be mine til I bought my iMac ) and he wants to use it for his sound/mixing/recording stuff. He reckons that if he upgrades the RAM to 1gb it should handle mixing and recording programs so long as it's using outside synths and not virtual instruments. I'm not sure about that because it really struggled with my design programs, but then I never tried upgrading the RAM (always meant to, never got around to it). Anyway, thought he may as well at least give it a go rather than spending $1000 or more on another computer straight off the mark (hey, we need that $1000 for our wedding! )

He's planning on getting a new wireless card, so that should be okay. It's got a teeny tiny hard drive (20gb), but then he won't have much on there except his sound stuff, and he can always shift stuff onto my baby or onto CD if he's running out of room. All in all it's been a decent computer so far.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. - Oscar Wilde