Over the last few years of using Macs I've had a real nightmare of a time trying to use
third party memory. But given the exorbitant prices Apple charges for their memory, they
really give you no choice. I mean, they want $500 for a 1GB stick for my Powerbook? Are
they crazy? There's just no way I could live with paying that. But they know they've got
you because their products are so picky about their memory. Until now, I'd only scored a
one out of three attempts at using third party memory in my PowerMac, PowerBook, and
iBook.
Way back I popped some odd memory in my old 933MHz PowerMac, and it worked no problem, boosting my confidence ("hey, what are all the rumors about, Apple products work fine with any old memory"). For my wife's 933MHz iBook, a big negative--I finally just gave up, ate the return fee, and bought Apple memory. For my 1.25GHz PowerBook, I even did extensive research ahead of time, bought what should have worked, but sadly--I ended up with crash central. Turns out the reviews I'd read were for a slightly newer model. Ka-ching, I ate the return fee. What's frustrating is how the third-party memory will actually work... for about 15 minutes or so. Then the OS will crash. Or you'll close the lid (big mistake). Apparently my laptop is the pickiest of picky Apple products... the first edition Aluminum 15" PowerBook.
So recently I really wanted some more memory for my laptop, and thought I'd brave it again. I found a vendor that guaranteed their memory would work in my laptop, if I bought using their memory chooser. Hehe. Okay, suckers... here goes.... and sure enough...
Bzzzzt--it didn't work. It was Kingston memory too, which I thought was a pretty safe bet. But they made good on their promise, after submitting an RMA request, I got a call from a very knowledgeable technician who said he felt the Samsung brand would have better luck, as Apple apparently uses a lot of it internally. He'd cross ship it out to me, and all I'd have to do is ship back the Kingston at my leisure. Sure thing, I'll give it a try. No one's ever cross shipped anything to me before, how nice.
And, believe it or not, success! Hooray! I finally have more memory in my laptop and didn't have to pay an arm and a leg for it. I got 2GB for around $290. 2GB would have cost me $1000 from Apple. That's just ridiculous.
(Oh, I should probably plug the vendor, since they did make this happen: Memory-Up, I'd definitely buy from them again.)