Toshiba Tecra S1 Memory Upgrade

[Stoney]

My sister gave me an old Tecra S1 that had been sitting in her closet for a year and a half. She got it from the company she worked for. They were giving them away (with one very expensive leather Dell notebook carrying case).

I didn't expect much considering it was a company laptop and it had a lot of users. But suprisingly after tweaking and testing (such as HD diagnostic), upgrading (to SP2),etc. for 3 days straight, it has turned out to be a very stable system.

Now for the memory question. Right now it has 512 megs of DDR PC2100. The motherboard is designed for 2 gigs of RAM and i can either install PC2100 or PC2700. Crucial's memory configuration says it definitely can take PC 2700 but Kingston's configuration said that though I can install the PC2700 it will only run at PC2100 speed regardless.

I can get both PC2100 and PC2700 for almost eactly the same price. Thoughts? Advice?

[PrntRhd]

Sure, Crucial guarantees their memory is compatible and will work, and it will run at the speed of the lowest spec RAM installed.
(they are both correct)

[Stoney]

Wow! Thanks for the quick reply. So when you say "they are both correct" you mean that Crucial is correct that my mobo will take PC2700, but Kingston is right in that even if I do install PC2700 I won't utilize its full potential because the motherboard will keep it at 266MHz. Correct?

This is what Kingston says, "KTT3614/xxx (266) and KTT3311/xxx (333) are both supported for this system, and can be mixed, but will only run at 266MHz no matter what is installed."

I have searched high and low to see if my motherboard revision along with the very last BIOS update from 2005 might have tweaked it to where the PC2700 could be utilized to its fullest, but no luck so far. Toshiba's website has Tecra S1 under their archives but trying to find what I am looking for is near impossible.

PrntRhd, when it comes to laptops I am quite the novice so I will ask, would it be a wise move to just upgrade to 2 gigs of PC2100 and not bother with 2700 since I can't utilize its full poitential anyway?

Thanks again.

[PrntRhd]

I am partial to Crucial's guarantee, it means you can buy their memory and know it will work, the risk of using the different speed is theirs.
Laptops are sometimes quite picky about the memory specs, but if Crucial says it will work they are usually right.

[mjc]

Go with whatever is cheaper...if 2700 is cheaper, use that. The 'extra' won't matter. The rating for memory is the 'highest' speed it is guaranteed to work at.

[Stoney]

Just wanted to thank you guys again and update you that I was able to utilize 2 gigs of Kingston PC2100 without an issue. it was immediately recognized and though the boot time hasn't increased much in speed, applications and tasks are definitely faster.

[mjc]

You're welcome...it is always nice to hear back from a poster when things have gone according to plan.