Why is it so hard to buy extra RAM?

As I mentioned in a recent post, I managed to buy a PC with only half the RAM I'd intended, following some carelessness by PC World and a lack of checking by myself. I decided to buy the missing 2GB of memory using the £80 refund PC World gave me.

First, I opened up my PC to look at the memory slots. There were two, one of them empty. I carefully took out the RAM board to look for a product code or something that would let me order a new one. As has happened every time I've tried this in the past, all I could find were several very long numbers, which might mean something to the manufacturer, but certainly don't mean anything to me. I carefully made a note of what the RAM looked like, put it back in, and booted up my PC. (With a quick check in case it now thought it had 0GB.)

Why the manufacturers make it so hard to order more of their product is beyond me. Maybe not enough PC owners get round to installing extra RAM, or maybe they are actually providing all the information I need, but I'm just too ignorant to work out what they're telling me.

Whatever.

Onto Lenovo's web site; surely they would be able to tell me what RAM to order. No, they mentioned the H420, but I couldn't find a spec for it. A colleague mentioned Crucial, who list loads of PCs and the memory they need. They had several Lenovos, but not mine. That's what comes of buying a new model, I guess. Then I read about a free program you could download that tells you all the intimate details of your machine. I won't give you its name, because their web site managed to trick me into downloading and installing a completely different program, which also changed my default search engine in all three browsers I've got installed, as well as insinuating itself via unwanted toolbars and start up settings. It goes by the name of iLivid, and I've been seeing tempting download ads for it all over the place recently. That might just be ad servers spotting I've got a cookie from it though. uLivid would be a better name for it. I thought I'd managed to get rid of it last week, but I found today that it had got back into IE9. The icing on the cake was that the program I was looking for claimed it was getting incorrect values from Lenovo, and couldn't really be sure what RAM I needed. I uninstalled that too.

While reading up furiously about the different types of RAM available (including the bizarre discovery that 10600 and 10700 mean the same thing, because it's actually 10666 but vendors round it up or down in case the '666' puts people off), I came across a company called Orca based in Surrey. They also had a memory checker facility, which couldn't tell me about my model (although I see it now can), but which did offer me the chance to e-mail for help. I told them my model number and hoped for the best.

It was a Saturday, so I was more than a little surprised to get a reply at 16.45 telling me exactly what I needed to know, and even pointing me into their on-line catalogue where I could order the new RAM. It turned up earlier this week, and is now sitting comfortably inside its slot, working just fine.

Now that's service!

And just for the record, the Lenovo H420 takes 240-Pin DDR3 DIMM PC3-10600 (1333MHz).

A Farewell to Windows XP

After nearly a decade of using Windows XP, I've finally moved to a more up to date operating system. I am now the proudish owner of a Lenovo H420 running Windows 7 Home.

The excitement of a new computer is always soon tempered by the realisation of how many programs need installing on it, as well as the long slog of getting all your settings correct, and the other long slog of rooting out all the unwanted rubbish that the manufacturer thought you might like. I bought it on a Saturday, but wasn't happy with it until Sunday the following week. (Not that I spent eight solid days on it, mind.)

Mostly it went very smoothly. In the case of Google Chrome, it was almost effortless: as soon as I enabled Chrome Sync, it transferred all my previous settings, and even installed my chosen set of plug-ins. Python was a less happy experience, when I discovered that the last of my essential libraries wasn't available in 64 bit form, and so had to uninstall all the others and start again with the 32 bit versions. I had similar incompatibilities with 64 bit Eclipse and Java. That, though, wasn't my fault, as the Java download page doesn't offer you a choice, and merrily installs the 32 bit version.

By last Sunday most of my treasured functionality was available again; I just had to add a folder to my $PATH variable. I brought up the System section in the control panel, and got two shocks. Incredibly, the editor for environment variables is still the cramped, rubbishy little box it was in the nineties:

How hard would it be to give us a proper dialog for entering these values? Instead you have to type in a list of semicolon-separated folder names, nearly all of which start with 'C:\Program Files' so you quickly get lost if you try scrolling through it. Unbelievable. Contrast that with the improvements made to the 'Extract All' option for zip files: Windows XP brings up a three pane wizard, while Windows 7 sensibly combines these three into a single screen. I cannot believe nobody at Microsoft finds this editor annoying. Maybe it's legacy code that Steve Ballmer wrote, and everyone's too scared to change it.

That was my first shock. The other came when I happened to glance at the installed memory figure. 2.00GB? The PC I ordered had 4GB. And what's this? A Celeron processor, where I thought I had bought an i3 core. Yes, I had managed to come away from PC World with the wrong computer. I'd reserved a £350 Lenovo H420 on their web site, then gone to collect it. They'd given me the £270 version instead. The receipt was okay though!

The details were there to see on the box, but I'd been too busy opening it. And the Intel Inside sticker on the front of the PC did say 'Celeron'. But I put 'desktop' PCs on the floor, so the sticker ended up conveniently situated at carpet level.

PC World offered to wipe the PC I had and give me the correct model. However, as they'd proved incapable of getting the correct box out of their back room I decided against handing over a computer full of my personal details in the hope that they might remember to clean the disc before they sold it on. Also, after all the work I'd put in getting the PC up and running, I was in no mood to go back to square one. In the end I settled for a refund of the difference in price. The main reason for buying the computer in the first place was to get some more speed, and this machine seems fast enough.

Here's some advice for PC World at Clifton Moor, York: when someone comes to pick up reserved goods, wipe the goods through your barcode scanner, not the reservation paperwork. As to Lenovo, given that a naming system that brings forth such memorable gems as 'H420' allows for 26000 possibilities, maybe you could try not giving two different computers the same model number. As for me, I've learned the importance of reading the label before opening the box.