Ram Access- bottom plastics

It seems that the major AAO issue is access to the RAM for easy upgrade/replacement. If I understand all the breakdowns properly, the RAM is located underneath the motherboard (roughly where the black "Acer" sticker is located on the bottom of the case.

The Dell Mini 9 looks to be the same form factor (I haven't done a side-to-side comparison). The bottom plastic on the Dell has a door with two phillips screws for access to the RAM and other naughty bits. It's in pretty much the same location as the black Acer label on the AAO and hence the AAO's RAM.

Just wondering if the Dell Mini 9's bottom plastic woulf fit the AAO. I know that, if it does, the initial install would essentially be the same as replacing the AAO RAM (taking the whole fool thing apart), but it would save a bunch as a permanent solution.

Of course, your mileage may vary. Either way, I'd be interested to hear opinions on this potential "mod"

Larry

 

No way. Different motherboard, different fittings, different shape of everything inside... Don't think it's possible...

 

It sounds like this mod would be more dangerous (to the system) and more time consuming then actually opening it upo to add some RAM....

 

It seems that it is a design fault of the AA0 because the ram should be accessed easily like many other PC.

 

Design fault or marketing strategy? If they don't leave it open, then most users that won't take the chance of installing things themselves will have to send it to them in order to get more RAM. It is most likely in their best interest and not the user.

 

Well, I'm as cynical as the next guy, but I don't think that was their reasoning. In fact, I don't think Acer even offers upgrade service. I think they're just idiots who thought 512 MB is enough for anybody.

Before I took apart my computer to upgrade my memory, I considered cutting a little "trapdoor" in the bottom plastic cover. Probably a good thing I didn't do it that way .

 

you guys are demanding too much for netbooks. what would be the best solution, is to buy new laptop
but putting the ram door seems like a good idea, but most likely you'll damage the chassis anyways, so don't attempt it.

 

And also remember you do this once only... Let's say twice in case of problems. I think opening AA1 is not that difficult...

 

sorry man, when i said you'll damage the chassis, it really means that you shouldn't cut a ram door on the bottom. Taking apart the aspire one is a piece of cake, I have taken it apart for the 5th time and no problems so far.

 

I don't really understand why you would need frequent access to the RAM.
All I had to do was open it up, install the extra 1G and then put it together again... thats it.
So theres really no need, but what would be fairly useful (if not nigh on impossible), would be to have
a trap door for the HDD, but we all know thats not going to happen! :roll:

 

it's more complicated upgrading the ram than it needed to be but its not really a big deal. I had my aao apart within 10 minutes of taking it out of the box. Put in the 1GB ram, put together and tested, job done. No reason to need to go in there again, unless I do an internal bluetooth mod like I did with my eeepc

 

Trap Door is nice but adds to the cost.
I used to work part time for Toshiba and added stuff small or large always added costs and work.

One extra mold that needs to be produced.
One Extra Piece to be Painted.
One extra Step for it to be assembled.
One extra Step for it to pass Quality Check or some FDA aproval.
One Extra piece the End user can break.

U think its cheap to just add a door but it will add 10-50 USD to the overal price.
The Acer Aspire One was designed to be competitive in the Price Point area, not on what it has.
And at the time of release it was the cheapest Netbook around, i am not sure about now.

299 looks alot better than 340 or 349 looks alot better than 399.

To me the price point Between MSI EEE and Acer was my decission on which to pick.
And ofcrouse what it had inside. Pretty sure alot of ppl worried about the price also.

 

There is really NO excuse for the lack of a RAM door.

If all AAO were sold with 1,5GB RAM, no one would care about the RAM door. But they are not!

They put a door for 3G on all 150's! Even those that don't have 3G modules! What for? (they didn't want seperate product lines that's why)

Don't forget Acer is a manufacturer, they don't order their netbooks from other companies like Sony, Dell etc do (=very small costs)

 

Hmmm... Sounds like an after market ad on for the Chinese to come up with... A bottom with easy access... Go Gung Ho!

 

I agree.
Buy a 1GB SO-DIMM install it and forget about it. Cost of RAM is very small. Install and forget.
If you resell having a pristine case will get you more money than having a horrible hole in the case which could only detract from value.

 

Hey now, What are you saying. Allot of you people are making it seem that adding ram to the One is a tedious task. To me; It's pretty fun.

I actually appreciate that there is no panel to access the modules. If there was a panel it'd be opened rarely, hence there would be wasteful production on a useless part that'd only be used once.
Maybe there is no excuse because there's no place for an excuse. There's really no need for a useless access panel like that.

 

Whether it's tedious or not, maybe you have a point. I wonder how much more it would cost for Acer to add a RAM door. And then I wonder how much more it would cost for Acer just to make the One with the maximum memory built in so there would be no need for a RAM door or for users to dismantle their machine.

 

Don't forget, Aspire one wasn't manufactured at Acer, it was made by quanta computers instead.

 

It would have made more sense to put a RAM door and get rid of the 3g door. The 3G door is completely useless since we aren't even given an open slot to install one.

 

There are some very good reasons to come up with a bottom access cover for the motherboard;

1) Ram access
2) CMOS battery access
3) *Space for accessories like; Bluetooth, flash drives.

*There is very little space inside the AAO for added devices. One of the areas where there is some space is the bottom of the motherboard arround the Ram module. But it is difficult to use this space because of the way the motherboard installs in the case. An access door would allow easy access to installed devices.