When I got my desktop machine a little over a year ago, I had to send the 3rd party RAM (from Other World Computing - great service and people, but I don’t trust their RAM anymore) back twice before I could boot up the machine with the RAM in it.
I’ve had intermittent video artifacting and other issues that are attributable to bad RAM over the last year, but this weekend it finally reached the point where the machine will not boot anymore. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me and computers1. 
I’ve opened an RMA with OWC to send back the RAM for a 3rd time (it’s got a lifetime warranty), in the hopes that the 4th set of RAM they send me will work properly. I actually requested a refund so I can go place an order elsewhere, but I doubt they will honor that request they ignored that part of my support ticket.
I can say this: going back to 512KMB (thanks Erik) or RAM after having 4.5GB for the last year has been quite painful! Maybe I should just order some from Crucial in the interim…
- And my MacBook just started exhibiting the “random shutdown” issue, so that will likely have to go in for service too. [back]
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Geof F. Morris adds this Comment:
Egad, man.
December 10th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Brett adds this Comment:
Indeed I learned this the hard way as well. I pretty much go crucial.com now ‘days… My old refurbed bondy blue iMac worked great in OS 9 with OWC RAM, but in OS X, things were quite unpredictable. Live and learn. This was probably 5 or 7 years ago.
Sorry to hear about the MacBook. We’ve got an unopened one here, that I hope won’t do the same…
December 10th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Erik J. Barzeski adds this Comment:
512K?
I like to use RAMJet, personally.
December 11th, 2006 at 10:53 am
Brian Blood adds this Comment:
RAM is like crack.
You ALWAYS want to get the good stuff, because the potential of getting the bad stuff is just not worth it.
December 13th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Dude - I thought it was the good stuff, but it was a bad trip.
December 14th, 2006 at 1:10 am
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