I'm still waiting for my new memory to come via US Mail (cheapee me, US Mail had no shipping), but yesterday DH and I shopped at Fry's Computer.

The two signs of recession at Fry was slightly fewer people shopping around, and shopping baskets of cheap stocking stuffers. Hard to believe that 2Gig flash drives are now $9.99. A couple of years ago a Gig was up around 100$ or so.

Anyway, Friday night I tested out my old external cooler (fan and a chiller). No sound and no cooling. I suspect that the memory got cooked by the high temps that a souped-up laptop generates, so the cooler needed to be replaced before the new memory shows up. At Fry's I picked out the cooler that has a separate AC adapter. The coolers that use the USB port exclusively have one fatal flaw - but if the cooler bombs out, not only does it bomb out the memory, it also injures the USB ports. So not only could a non-working cooler kill parts of your laptop, it could prevent the next cooler from working properly.

It was pricey for a cooler - $49, but it had a 20$ rebate, so I filled it out and sent it off.

Along with a cooler, I got a bit sick of the USB mouse, so I treated myself and stimulated the economy by picking up a 39$ optical wireless mouse. And I picked up a lid that prevents dinner splatter in the microwave - 2.50$.

All told = 95$.

Today, I'm the process of trying out my new cooler. Frosty! I've checked to see how much I can do with half baked memory. Only one of the two memory cards got cooked, the other seems to be holding up. I'm living right - the 256K got cooked, rather than the 512K.