Compaq Presario F755US 15.4" Widescreen Laptop
Model #: CPQ F755US

Original Price:$529.96
You save:-$120.00
You pay:$409.96
Mail-in rebate(s):-$30.00

Price after rebate:$379.96

Link

I also upgraded my Extensa 5620. Took off the back panel, popped out a 512MB SODIMM and replaced it with a 2GB (Kingston) from Newegg. Voila!

On the back panel, make sure you keep track of the seven little screws and don't use too much elbow grease when removing or installing. You can easily strip those screws or lose one. The screws have a little fiber washer on the back of them, to help retain them to the panel.

Once you've loosened the screws, just slip a large flat blade screwdriver under the notch on the panel and pop it off. Don't be too shy, but if it's not budging at all, stop before you break something.

Make sure all the screws are really loose and then continue.

After you've done it once, it won't be a problem.

After upgrading to 2.5 GB RAM, Vista Home Premium 32 runs a bit smoother. Did not change my "Windows Experience" rating, improve startup/shutdown significantly or extend my battery life much (still get 2.5 hours per charge). But there's somewhat less disk activity and it feels a little peppier. I don't stress the system much, but if I was running a lot of Office applications at one time, I am sure I would have noticed a bigger improvement.

According to "Vista experts", I won't see the real benefit of the RAM upgrade until I've used the system for a week or so. Then Vista's superior "prefetch" and "super cache" features will kick in.

I'll give it a couple of weeks, but may eventually just switch over to XP.

Just curious, how will this compare to the Asus EEEpc 1000 (w/ the Intel Atom Processor), speed/performance wise?
Thanks,
-BassKozz

In case anyone is interested, several flavors of Linux run fine on this lappy.

I played with mine over the weekend and got PC Linux OS (MiniMe 2008) dual booting. Seems pretty snappy too.

One warning:...if you're installing Linux on a Vista machine, and you want to dual-boot into Vista, do NOT let your Linux installer try to re-size an existing Vista-partition. If you're wiping out the hard drive completely for Linux and don't care about Vista, then go ahead and use the installer. But if you want to keep Vista, or the Acer eRecovery partition, don't let Linux re-size it. I learned my lesson the hard way.

The issue: The new version of NTFS that Vista uses is not compatible with most existing Linux distros...at least ones more than a few months old. (Or any?) If you let your Linux installer try to make some hard disk space by re-sizing an existing partition, you'll screw up your system. You likely won't be able to boot into Vista, do an Acer eRecovery from the hard drive, or even rebuild from your recovery DVDs. (You did make recovery DVDs or CDs before you started all this, didn't you?)

Thankfully, I was able to recover my Vista by going back into Linux (booted from a live-cd) and deleting the 50GB NTFS partition "D", which DiskDrake had messed up during the install. Then I was able to boot back into Vista and re-sized the D partition, which I should have done in the first place.

Lesson learned: It's better to delete an existing Vista partition, or re-size an existing partition using Vista BEFORE you start the Linux install. That way your Linux installer can work with that empty space and there should be no problems.

Dual, triple, multi-OS Booting: PC Linux OS setup a GRUB install which lets me chose between the Acer eRecovery Partition, Vista Home Premium 32(on C: partition), and Linux (on a new 10GB partition, made by reducing D down from 50GB to 40GB).

Most everything in PC Linux OS seems to work out right of the box, except the Atheros Wifi chip. Atheros is notorious for being difficult to use under Linux without some tweaking. I just need to find a Windows driver that will run under ndiswrapper and I should be set.

Have not been able to find anyone who has the modem working on this lappy under Linux. That doesn't bother me, but it would still be nice to have it.

Here's a few Linux links to ponder:

Link #1

Link #2

Link #3 - Ubunto Info

When I get mine all up and running with WiFi, I'll try to write up a HowTo and link it here.