Morph Productions: How to change the ram in an Acer Aspire 5500z laptop

This may seem like a random post since I'm largely a mac user but I recently upgraded the ram in my sisters Acer 5000z laptop and figured I'd throw up some pictures on the blog for those who may be intimidated by doing an upgrade like this. If you find your computer slowing down a ram upgrade can be the simplest and cheapest way to give it some new life. Ram upgrades are generally the easiest upgrade you'll do to a computer but for those with a faint heart it doesn't hurt to have a tutorial. Please keep in mind that I am not a professional computer technician and this blog is only for advising purposes. Please do your own research and do this upgrade at your own peril!

To upgrade the ram on the Acer 5500z you need to buy some ram chips. Luckily the type of ram these machines use is really cheap. I picked up 2 - 1 gig chips of kingston ram for 40 bucks. Not bad! The type of ram this machine uses is:

DDR2 Non-ECC 533MHZ SODIMM chips. These are 200 pin chips. Here's a link to get the chips I used for a good price:

Here's a pic of the laptop with the ram chips beside it. Pretty huh? ***IMPORTANT*** Turn the computer off unplug the laptop and take the battery out as well to make sure you and your computer are safe.

So now that you got the ram lets get to work! Flip the machine over and hopefully you'll see what's in this picture below. I've circled the compartment in red and made some arrows pointing at the two screws you'll be removing. As you can see I'm not a computer technician but I'm also not a photoshop expert either. :)

Once the lid is open you'll see a ram chip or two. There's clips on either side that you can gently click away from the ram. After you've done that the ram will pop up a bit and you can slide it out.