Overkill to buy all types of memory

[sharpwitz]

I am new to field and was curious if it is overkill to buy all the memory types so that I have them available for testing in case someone's computer has bad memory. I've seen it in the field where the tech could not re-install the OS and got the BSOD (blue screen of death) and it turned out to faulty memory that prevented the re-install to work.

So I thought about going to microcenter to buy 2 gb worth of DDR 333, PC-2700, PC2-5300, ddr3 1066, ddr2 667, ddr2 800 for laptops.

Overkill and a waste of money to have these on hand ?

 

[angry_geek]

Definitely overkill. In a short time, you will find you will accumulate bins full of memory. If you want some for testing, just go to newegg and buy a bunch of 512 mb or 1 gb sticks. You don't need to do performance tests; you just need some for testing.

 

[digitaldunc]

I personally keep to hand the slowest, smallest sizes of each type of DIMM for testing.

Atm I only keep Standard SDRAM, DDR and DDR2.

You may disagree but I believe that DDR3 is still an enthusiast part, although this is beginning to change.

 

[Kenhelms]

Something to bear in mind, is also that a lot of memory types are backward compatible. I keep a lot on hand, of small size.

 

[angry_geek]

You may disagree but I believe that DDR3 is still an enthusiast part, although this is beginning to change.

I've sold about 2 dozen laptops in the last month for back to school stuff and others. Well over half of them had DDR3. It's not just for enthusiasts anymore. Even the new Acer Timeline series has DDR3. With the new socket changes coming from Intel and AMD within the next couple of months, we won't be seeing DDR2 for much longer in new systems.

 

[angry_geek]

I didn't say repair. I said new machines out now and coming in the next couple of months. Also, get ready for micro-sata drives. Been seeing a lot of these in the new slimmer notebooks. The times, they are a changing.

 

[angry_geek]

Whats a micro sata drive?
The more business I get, the less I get to read about the cool new tech it makes me sad.

Hehe. Don't worry, it's impossible to keep up with. I saw my first one in a new Acer Notebook. Mostly used for 1.8" drives. It's actually been around for a couple of years in the ipods and a few other applications. With platter density growing and other new micro technologies, they're turning up all over the place. They can run in either 3.3 volts or 5.

http://apcmag.com/new_sata_standard_unveiled_pata_turns_in_grave_emits_small_whimper.htm

Their is also a mini sata spec, but I haven't seen it yet in anything. It looks similar to sata, but their are real differences.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=...&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4

I just ordered a couple of these this week. http://www.cooldrives.com/mimiandstsah.html

Edit: I guess I have seen mini-sata. It's used with some laptop dvd drives. I just never noticed I guess.

 

[seedubya]

Whats a micro sata drive?
The more business I get, the less I get to read about the cool new tech it makes me sad.

This happens to me too! Anyway microsata is a slightly smaller SATA connector for 1.8" hard drives and SSDs

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

I've swapped a couple of the 1.8" drives in the macbook airs. Talk about super fragile ribbon cables! Luckily I haven't ran into a situation with those swaps where I needed to worry about data (they had backups) because we hadn't yet prepared for a situation of needing an external case for one of those drives. The DDR3 RAM is now standard in all of the recently released Apple laptops and most desktops, so we are stocking that RAM now and have customers needing upgrades.

I agree all of the sudden changes are hard to keep up with sometimes, but successful computer techs will and do adapt like we have for years. Truthfully that's what keeps me interested.