I may be wrong, but the limitation on ram is never at the cpu. The core 2 duo should be able to recognize up to 32gb i believe.
The limitation is in the motherboard, which type ram they went with and whether it's the economy version. My acer aspire came with 2gb, but the slots supported up to 4gb sticks. If you look up the model of the laptop specifications you'll find the limits listed. Use matching manufacturers and sizes if you want no memory issues (providing they are good sticks and you didn't shock them with static electricity). That setup may be able to handle 4gb to 16gb... depending on type and slot.
You are right, my comment was not very clear about differentiating CPU and m/b limitations. Thanks for the clarification.
While I do not know if we are talking about the same Aspire, I managed to bump the memory to 16GB even the manual says the limitation is 8GB. I even changed CPU (one Aspire came with Pentium other one came with Celeron) with core i5M (bought used ones cheap at eBay).
Actually as long as the memory type (DDR2, DDR3, DDR4, etc.), memory speed (1067MHz, 1333MHz, 1600MHz, etc.) and capacity (2BG, 4GB, 8GB, etc) match, it is possible to mix RAM from different manufacturers. One of our Aspire has such combination and running without a issue for some years.
Another limitation could be imposed by BIOS.
Our Aspire (5349 and 5749Z) came wit a "speed limit" for RAM and regardless of the actual memory speed, it is capped at 1067MHz. I think it is because Acer used the same m/b for this line of Aspire and differentiated high/low end models by limiting their capacity with BIOS. It reminds me what AMD did for their CPU (FX series) in the past to produce lower end models by killing some of CPU cores.
I flashed both Aspire with mod BIOS to remove this "speed limit". Both machines are currently functioning exactly like their high end model
I had an 17" aspire with quad core. I believe the slots could handle two 8gb sticks, something i didn't have the money for.
I never got into the moded bios scene. I'd use some tutorials to unlock hidden features and open inaccessible ones, but i wanted the warranty in case i damaged something. I used to root phones, but enjoy the security features and biometric access that Knox provides now. If there were a way without effecting Knox I'd still be doing such things.
In the past i have noticed ram modules not playing well together. Whether they were expensive or cheap. Maybe the one was on its way out, who knows. But when i matched them (same size, clock and manufacturer) i had no problems for years after. It's something i try to do because the other module will know how things are being handled, it works. Can't expect two ssd's of different manufacturers to have the same read and write speeds, they'll handle both operations differently, even only slightly, with priority set in different efficiencies (speed vs power consumption, cached vs direct write)... same as in ram.
All my upgrades were done with used parts acquired at eBay. You will be amazed how cheap once the parts become "used". I remember those core i5M cost me about 24 Euro each.
Yes that is true. That is why I bought 64 GB RAM as a kit (produced in the same lot, that is) for my production machine. To match everything exactly, they must come from the same production run.
As for the laptops, they are more like my hobby machines and I do not mind take chances. Apart from one Aspire I gave to my daughter-in-law and 2-in-1 tablet my husband is using as score reader (he is a professional musician), everything else were bought used at eBay. So I do not have to worry about warranty. There is no such thing from the beginning
I did that in past as well. But I found Android OS way more complicated than Linux, so I gave up on it. For the same reason I gave up on running OSX on PC, even I assembled this machine optimized for that purpose. It really felt like I go nowhere. I decided spend my time learning Linux since it is much more rewarding experience
Hi,
I've been checking this offer out, but am getting more confused the longer I look. The Windows 10 ISO is only for 7 and up, according to most things I see. I'm not sure it will work for Vista. But, if you can find anything you can post here that suggests otherwise, I wouldn't mind seeing it.
It looks like you could install Windows 10 but you cannot use the pre-existing Vista key Too bad.
I am afraid your option is rather limited.
The safest way to run unsupported version of Windows is to run it as a virtual machine on the Linux host. But 2GB RAM is not enough. Some says 4GB, but from my experience, you need at least 8GB to run it at a reasonable speed.
Alternatively, there is another way to use Windows 10 for free, which is to become a Windows Insider and use an evaluation copy of upcoming version of Windows. This is what I use in my dualboot Aspire and apart from very frequent update, I have had zero problem. Insider built expires after 30 days. It is possible to extend it with some extra steps.
Hi,
I checked Rescuezilla out, but it is only offering a 64 bit download; not sure if it's compatible with my 32 bit Vista. I'm more interested in making a mirror image of my system, but I can't find any really free software to do it, only 30 day trial. Any suggestions?
At the time I had tested it, Zorin OS consistently kept lower CPU usage than MX Linux. It's been a while... But there is a thread on it on the Old ZorinGroup Forum.
Mine was by accident. I had a conky running that monitored CPU usage. I noticed that on MX Linux, the CPU stayed running pretty high. On Zorin Lite, it would spike, then drop back down.
So, I started testing it further.
It was for an older notebook I wanted to salvage and was looking for the Most well managed and lightest weight OS to use on it.
I was actually trying to get away from Zorin OS at the time. Zorin OS lite was the last distro that I tried... and it outpaced them all. It also introduced me to XFCE, helping me send Gnome to the same trashcan as Windows, (Which it turns out, it was not really Zorin OS that was giving me the constant problems, it was Gnome. Once I switched to XFCE, all the constant troubleshooting and configuring and headaches went away.)
Too bad.
at least we need more options while installing ( to actually choose minimal install, pure bare Gnome without apps).