The release of the Fujitsu P1620 with 2 GB of memory as an option has led a lot of people to question if the P1610 can be upgraded. I just went to the Fujitsu online store and the answer is yes, if you’re willing to spend over $500 you can upgrade your P1610 to 2GB of RAM:
I couldn’t find the new 100 GB hard drive option available as a user purchase though.
I suspect most 1610 users are, like myself, using it with XP – and therefore not much to be gained from the upgrade. For someone running Vista already, it might make sense. Pretty freakin’ pricey though !
I’ve had conversations with Fujitsu sales and technical support regarding the 2GB memory card in the P1610, and in both cases they indicated that there is a mistake on the web site. The tech rep said the P1610 motherboard can’t handle more than 1GB RAM. Others have questioned whether its actually the bios. Either way, until the price comes down I’m willing to wait.
Just had a look on the Fujitsu Canada website, it also lists the 2GB option.
The one thing about Fujitsu that I find really irritating is how difficult it is to get their products. It took me months to find a P1610 with 1Gb of RAM here in the UK and the 1Gb RAM modules are still just as hard to find. Now they announce the P1620 and the 2GB modules but they are only available in North America (despite the fact that the Siemens part of the company is supposed to be German and therefore European) and seem to be pretty hard to get over there. Why not just mass-produce the damn things, sell a few, get the prices down and make them available to people?
I’d love to get this! I may just order it and see if it works, if not I will return it. 2gb plus vista SP1 and I finally might be able to run vista.
I previously own the P1610 and upgraded to 2 gigs using a Kingston piece. I forgot which model but it was under $200. See leog.net forums for my previous posts.
Sorry, my previous post was incorrect. My upgrade was 512 to 1 gigabyte. My apologies.
I pointed Fujitsu Level 2 support to this:
http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/SelectAccessoryDetail.jsp?partNumber=FPCEM394AP&category=Memory%20Expansion&title=2%20GB%20DDR2%20Micro-DIMM%20533%20MHz
and after MANY go arounds they finally said (drum roll please):
“Hello Mr. Merin,
We are able to access the link and it shows that the 2GB stick is compatible with our unit. This would mean that the 2GB stick is supported by us in the P1610.
Regards,
Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation
Level II Escalation Support
BMM”
———–
I guess this makes it official?!
This is very interesting indeed – a quick check a my local PC store, they list various 2GB 200-pin SO-DIMM DDR2 667MHz & 800MHz for AUD $55 & AUD $80 respectively. Its not the 533MHz fujitsu is using in my P1610, but surely you should be able to install these 667/800MHz RAM without an issue???
Of course, the first question is still whether or not the p1610 can utilize a 2 gig module. If it can, why not indeed use a faster bus speed stick — in most machines, a certain degree of backward compatability of memory bus speed works.