I got the extra memory for my new notebook yesterday. My programs now luxuriate in 750MB of glorious memory space. Once I'd fitted the chips I looked around for a decent memory tester just to make sure that the new devices were compatible. I've not had any problems with machines which have duff memory, but I know that this can be an issue.

I found a lovely, free, memory test program at: http://www.memtest86.com/. This is nice because it installs to a bootable CD-ROM. That means that when it runs every part of the memory is tested, which might not be the case if there is an operating system loaded. I ran the tests for around 3 hours with no fails, so I reckon that the system is OK.

If you find that your computer is not behaving well I would suggest you get a copy of this program and fire it up just to make sure that all is well in the mind of your PC. It is a dead doddle to use, just boot the machine from the CD and leave it running for a while. And the tests that it performs look quite fiendish, with nasty patterns of random bits and bobs being marched up and down the memory space.