I have a 5 year old dell desktop puter, (a tower) with 512 ram..I just upgraded my fios account and am told that I need to upgrade the Ram to 1 gig.
do I have to remove the old ram things, and put in new ones, or are there other empty slots..?

Buy a new tower

Definitely buy it a few drinks before you try and stick it in.

luv4u said:

Its not the tower, its the motherboard. I would like to know what sort of memory it has... Open the tower, its snap on/snap off... push the two levers on the sides and it will pop out. ( First remove all power and ground yourself, off carpet) I am about to pitch 2 towers, of the same age, into the garbage. We are all on laptops now. Note me and ill gladly send them your way if its a fit.

there also may be 4 slots and then you can just upgrade additional ram, if your motherboard can take the load. That data is in the CMOS.Either way its very simple and something you can easily do yourself!

Oh, if you decide to pull your RAM and write down the data, all you have to do is center the ram is the slot and gently push in the middle... it will snap into place.

I have other peripherals if anyone would like to upgrade a system beyond two years. I have hard drives and cd/dvd write rewrites.... all are basically plug n play and I can use FDC codes to get the the drivers for you.

muse2nopharaoh@yahoo.com if any one is interested.

its not difficult at all.

turn off, unplug, open up, insert the ram card in the available slots. cover, plug, turn on. Though I would go and get 1gb of ram cards n make sure the slots of the cards fit the slots of the motherboard.
[Edited 12/29/09 22:05pm]

Installing ram is probably one of the cheapest easiest computer upgrades that you can do yourself. Just follow the instructions Muse and lazy have given and you'll be ok.

Lookit Muse all knowledgeable about Comps and shit...

1st before you buy new ram determine what kind of ram you already have to avoid
you also can see how many memory slots there are and which are used without open your pc

SIW - System Information for Windows is a free tool to get all the right information

http://www.gtopala.com/

lazycrockett said:

Most open up with 1 screw....might take u 5 minutes


The hard part.. if you want to call it hard..
Is unpluging your computer and moving it..
and pluggin everything *mouse, speakers, keybord..power* back when you are done
[Edited 12/30/09 1:28am]

Does nobody sell expandable ram that you can just plug into a spare USB - or am I asking for the moon on a stick?

I'm allergic to screwdrivers.

GirlBrother said:

yes you are asking for the moon on the stick


Different mobos have differant rams some of the older mobos cant handle high ram so it would be a waste of money trying to upgrade it.

GirlBrother said:

As of now, they don't make that yet. Would be interesting if they did tho. It could be a godsend to netbook owners.