Laptop RAM Upgrade

[MacGyver]

Hey, haven't been around here for a while. My engineering technologist career has taken off, and with a company merger, my network admin duties were lifted from my shoulders. That's the good news. The bad news is that other than my day to day virtual paper pushing, I don't work with computers on a technical level much anymore, and I'm still using the same old computer since 2001, so my knowledge of the latest gear isn't up to speed.

Anyway, I went to a tradeshow/conference back in October and I won a Toshiba A105-2311 laptop! Gave it to my wife as a "my husband went to Florida and all he brought back for me was this laptop and a lousy t-shirt" present. This is a nice laptop but only has 256 MB of RAM, and it needs more. Not exactly sure what I need to put in this thing. Near as I can tell its PC4200 SODIMM but do I need proprietary RAM for this laptop or will generic do? If I go to any of the big memory maker websites they all give different part numbers which could be a marketing gimmick. I read through the manual but couldn't get more info than that.

Anyway, some guidance would be appreciated!

[shamus]

Nice to see you here! You've definitly done some ladder climbing me boy, that is great. Grats!
I'm in my 8th year working at the H.S. doing the things you've had lifted off your shoulders.
Daughter graduated from Wheelock in Mass. (she'll be 24 this Sunday) and teh Boyz are 14 and freshmen. Yeah...I'm starting to feel it.
As to the Tosh, I really haven't seen the proprietary issues with ram as much as I used to ( think 'Compaq' ..). I'm sure there may well be others here that have, but by and large the Gateways, Dells and iBooks I deal with have not been any real hassle taking various makes of ram.

[Gabriel]

Toshiba A105-2311 laptop! Gave it to my wife as a "my husband went to Florida and all he brought back for me was this laptop and a lousy t-shirt" present. This is a nice laptop but only has 256 MB of RAM, and it needs more.

Good to see you're alive and well - missed you
For the laptop - to be sure check in http://www.crucial.com/
(I also order memory from them - always reliable)

Cheers - and come back to visit,
Gabriel

[NooNoo]

Hey Macgyver!

Yah, crucial ram - no issues, no hassles.

[arch0nmyc0n]

when getting RAM for a laptop I usually call the manufacturer and get the part number, then call the RAM company and say I have this laptop and that uses this part number that company uses and generally they get me an answer within 24 hours. Never had a problem with getting the wrong RAM when I started doing that. Speaking of which, I have some obscure laptop RAM sitting around for a couple of years if anyone is looking for oddball types.

[slgrieb]

Crucial, PNY, and Lifetime are all brands I'd trust. The big issue with memory is just that there is a lot of junk around. As in most things, it's best to avoid the lowball brands.