Another entry just for any poor souls trapped in Google Hell.

While placing an order on TigerDirect.com for a VGA splitter cable (wtf, no B&M places within an hour's drive sell them...), I decided to go for 4GB of RAM for my laptop. 1GB is hardly enough these days with games/etc., and a possible Vista upgrade to go in the next 2 years (which I see as the possible main lifetime of my laptop).

After a long week of waiting (memory got stuck in UPS limbo over spring break), I got my RAM and installed it. Laptop doesn't boot. Uh oh. Figuring one or both of the sticks was bad, I try booting in both slots with just one. Both sticks check out fine in both slots. That's not good.

I tried one of the 512 sticks I had before in combination with one of the 2GB sticks I had ordered. No good. A lot of investigation later, and the best I can come up with is that the folks at Mitac decided on an Intel chipset that supports up to 4GB of RAM, but went with a memory controller than only supports 2GB (the Intel chipset identifier program was not particularly helpful in figuring this out; here's a clue, guys, an identification program probably should avoid giving the end user 16 possible configurations for their chipsets. At that point, I may as well just start guessing by picking random chipsets off your list)

Bottom line, if you've got a Mitac 8258 (and you're either Chinese or have managed to identify your laptop chassis/mainboard as such, which is no easy task), chances are you can only install a maximum of 2GB of RAM in your system. Luckily for me, my EeePC is happy to take the extra stick, so I didn't waste my money. But still..