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A "Mulligan" among golfers is what we, back on the block in my youth, inelegantly termed a "do-over." I managed two today, without breaking much of a sweat.
First came the Case of the Expanded Memory. My Ubuntu netbook was at times so slow I decided to invest in a memory upgrade. The folks at the Best Buy "Geek Squad" found the correct chip and agreed to do the upgrade for a price I agreed to, because (as I now realize) I had allowed myself to be intimidated by the description of what it takes to upgrade the memory in an Acer E3-111.
Since the memory card is not directly accessible after removing the bottom of the computer you also have to disconnect and remove the battery, disconnect the keyboard ribbon cable, disconnect the wireless module, disconnect the LCD ribbon cable, and disconnect the touchpad ribbon cable before you can unscrew the motherboard so you can remove it to get at the memory card.
I vaguely recalled that my Acer would only expand to 4 GB, but according to a variety of other sources, my exact model number should have been able to be expanded to 8 GB for only a nominal difference in price. Alas, once the guy on the other side of the glass finished the swap, the machine did absolutely nothing upon power-up. When he restored the original 2 GB card, the machine went back to being functional.
The guy who spoke to customers said the issue could be simply a bad 8-GB card, but there were no other such cards in the store. "What about a 4-GB card," I asked. There were none in stock. A phone call later, he determined that the Best Buy over on Fairmont Parkway had both 4-GB and 8-GB cards.
The head geek at the other store came out after a little while and flat out told me he wasn't comfortable working on my machine, owing to the complexity of what had to be done, so I bought an 8-GB card and went home to try again with a different card. The process was actually a lot easier than I had led myself to believe.
I got the same result (i.e., no joy) and repeated the steps to reinstall the original memory card. I returned to the Best Buy to get a 4-GB card, but the one they tried to sell me was the wrong model, so I ended up going online and ordering a 4-GB card from Amazon, which—mirabile dictu—was delivered today.
An old hand at this by now, I upgraded the memory and—bam!—Pushkin fired right back up!
In other news, I took an old, 55-GB hard drive that was lying around, reformatted it for ext3, hooked it up to my Netgear router, and configured it to do samba. Successfully!
Two for two, in much less time than during the first attempt.
Cheers...
First came the Case of the Expanded Memory. My Ubuntu netbook was at times so slow I decided to invest in a memory upgrade. The folks at the Best Buy "Geek Squad" found the correct chip and agreed to do the upgrade for a price I agreed to, because (as I now realize) I had allowed myself to be intimidated by the description of what it takes to upgrade the memory in an Acer E3-111.
Since the memory card is not directly accessible after removing the bottom of the computer you also have to disconnect and remove the battery, disconnect the keyboard ribbon cable, disconnect the wireless module, disconnect the LCD ribbon cable, and disconnect the touchpad ribbon cable before you can unscrew the motherboard so you can remove it to get at the memory card.
I vaguely recalled that my Acer would only expand to 4 GB, but according to a variety of other sources, my exact model number should have been able to be expanded to 8 GB for only a nominal difference in price. Alas, once the guy on the other side of the glass finished the swap, the machine did absolutely nothing upon power-up. When he restored the original 2 GB card, the machine went back to being functional.
The guy who spoke to customers said the issue could be simply a bad 8-GB card, but there were no other such cards in the store. "What about a 4-GB card," I asked. There were none in stock. A phone call later, he determined that the Best Buy over on Fairmont Parkway had both 4-GB and 8-GB cards.
The head geek at the other store came out after a little while and flat out told me he wasn't comfortable working on my machine, owing to the complexity of what had to be done, so I bought an 8-GB card and went home to try again with a different card. The process was actually a lot easier than I had led myself to believe.
I got the same result (i.e., no joy) and repeated the steps to reinstall the original memory card. I returned to the Best Buy to get a 4-GB card, but the one they tried to sell me was the wrong model, so I ended up going online and ordering a 4-GB card from Amazon, which—mirabile dictu—was delivered today.
An old hand at this by now, I upgraded the memory and—bam!—Pushkin fired right back up!
In other news, I took an old, 55-GB hard drive that was lying around, reformatted it for ext3, hooked it up to my Netgear router, and configured it to do samba. Successfully!
Two for two, in much less time than during the first attempt.
Cheers...
