[KiSA]

Backstory:

I needed a laptop for school and for some reason, I decided to go for a Mac. I heard about the new MacBooks being released so I bought the 2.0Ghz white model.
Testing it out I loved it. Leaps and bounds better than my windows PC, did everything well, except that it was somewhat slow. It had to have something to do with the RAM so I wanted to get more.
I went to 4allmemory.com and bought one 1GB stick of RAM. Cheap, fast, simple.


My MacBook was running as well as could be expected. For the week or so left of my summer class, everything runs fine. Then shortly after, it randomly crashes. I didn't think much of it. Then it crashed again. Sometimes after crashing I would press the power button and attempt to reboot; it would start up for about a half-second and then shut down. This would happen 4 or 5 times before it booted up fine.

The MacBook lasts anywhere from minutes to probably about 2 hrs. 4allmemory replaced the stick pretty quickly but this one is giving me the same problem now.


What I have figured
When I tried to run Photoshop with the stock 512, the system would crash before it even loaded completely. With the 1GB + 256MB, it would load up completely but would never last more than 10 minutes.
The 1 GB stick requires quite a bit more pressure to get in all the way, and although it seems to be inline with the 256 chip, I am not 100% positive that it is. Also, the lever gives a lot more resistance when I try to remove it.
aside from the Photoshop thing, the 2x256's almost never crash (except for one other isolated incedent) therefore I am positive that the issue is with the RAM


so what I am looking for an opinion on is this:
If the issue is with the 3rd party RAM chip, I can either keep switching it out a dozen times and pray, or try to get my money back (which won't happen since it's after the inital 30 days).

I have been reading about performance issues dealing with mismatched memory sizes, could that be it? if it is, I am going to try to remove the other 256 chip and run it off of just the 1GB.

I don't think I am ever going to resort to buying an Apple chip, I don't have that kind of money to throw around.

Can someone think of anything that I can do to remedy the problem?

[mduell]

I can't see how or why mismatched RAM would cause crashes. You're not getting optimal performance with mismatched RAM, but it shouldn't cause crashes.

Cheap RAM is cheap RAM, and sometimes it causes problems. I'd either keep playing the swap game with 4allmemory, or buy some "good" memory (like Crucial from Newegg).

High-frequency DDR2 modules do require quite a bit of insertion force; as the clockrates get higher, the fit between module and slot gets tigher.