Picked this little netbook up from bestbuy for a one-month backpacking trip that required some photo storage, emails and quick web surfing. Even back then, there were better options for each of those goals. But to balance them all, along with the all-important tenet of backpacking mobility (weight & packability), on top of budget, meant this laptop baby was going to Chile & Peru!
Upon return, the single gig of RAM wasn't tolerated for very long. And these days with all the storage/IT re-routing happening at home, the hdd chamber needed some accessing, too. Was able to find some relevant & helpful videos online, among the haystack of vids for the slew of Aspire One variants (like this); but having to sit through an entire vid, or trying to cherry-pick the exact moment to fast-forward/back-track to, wasn't terribly convenient. So that's where the idea for this came along.
OK! Without further adieu:
The Tools
Make sure, you always, got the right stuff. In this case, a philips screwdriver (no bigger than PH0 for this job), a flathead for some prying, and a disposble plastic card to keep things pried.
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| Plastic doesn't need to be credit-card sized. Just something sturdy enough to pry, that you can throw away or are ok with breaking. |
Turn it off
Also remove the battery. Pretty obvious, right? Let me assume I don't need to step you through this one.
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| While the Win7Starter S/N is worthless, it's just 5 secs to blur it out, :P |
I guess I should also point out that taking the necessary electro-static caution wouldn't be a bad idea. Mats, wrist straps, other methods to ground yourself, you know the drill. Me on the other hand, I live on the edge. Got no time for caution, it gets thrown to the wind. They're bffs by this point.
On that note, before I forget, reading this post means you've absolved me from any responsibility for damages caused from reading this post. Yes, the reasoning's a little circular. Take it or leave it, :P
Take out the Keyboard Panel
You eventually want to get to this point,
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| note the cable. It's why you don't want to yank the thing off. |
On my model, there are seven tabs/nibs that need prying in order to pop the keyboard out. Five on the top (left-most is fixed. the other four are 'elastic'), two on the sides (one on each, both are fixed). Don't try to pry from the bottom. Since the two sides and the top-left tabs don't flex, the keyboard is going to give way a little (see here). This is where experience and familiarity comes in, good luck!
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| I like to start from the left, and make by way over to the right. |
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| That shiny metalic thing inside the red circle is the keyboard. The tab is that black piece (best seen from top pic, splitting the gap of light into two) that's holding down the keyboard. |
As mentioned above, don't yank it away, as it's still connected by a cable. You physically can, I just wouldn't advise it. Further, be careful with the black plastic piece when removing (use either of your screwdrivers, I use my flathead) the cable from the laptop. It can fly away on you if you're not careful with your strength.
As seen from the video (1m10s into it), the latch can sorta work like a release lever. If you're able to flip the thing up without having it come out on you (as per aforementioned paragraph), all the power to you! I was lucky one time,
Pop out the Door
Although the memory and the hard drive slots are accessed from the bottom of the netbook, the door/panel cover has to be opened from the top (underneath the keyboard).
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| Remove the screws associated with the DOOR label (M2x7.5, five of them, with the red circles) |
Once that's done, take one of your drivers (I tend to use the philips here) and push out that black rectangular plastic "crater" that's just to the left of the bottom-right screw-hole. You know, the thing that has a "DOOR RELEASE" label (on the bottom-right of the metal part) with an arrow pointing to it. That pushes out the bottom cover a bit; enough to get that plastic card wedged in and have the rest of the cover released from its latches.
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| Red circle was where your screwdriver was pushing through. The yellow circles are where the prying with the plastic card comes into play. The broken latch on the top-left corner was before I figured out how to properly open the latch. |
C'est Fin!
From here, you can replace the RAM, replace the hdd, or clean out the heatsink fan a little with a can of compressed air.
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| The red circle is where you need to pull in order to disconnect the sata connector. After, you can easily pull out the hdd (from the left side was easiest). |
Reverse Step Gotchas
Obviously, once you're finished with the maintenance on the bottom, reverse these steps to close everything up. The panel needs to go back in latch side first, otherwise you WILL break the latches.
The keyboard cable re-attachment is a little tricky if you weren't able to flip the latch up (which requires the golden probes to fit through the latch gaps). I tend to place the cable into the slot first, and then use the screwdriver to push the plastic piece back in place. The right end (with the 49F) first, and then the left, with a finger holding down the plastic at the middle.
Post-Upgrade
Alright, now that there was a bit more hardware to play with (read, SSD), went around to see what had a huge impact. This is what I played with:
- SSD upgrade (as mentioned)
- Linux install
The Linux install (Lubuntu in my case) definitely lowered RAM consumption. And the SSD did speed up Win10. But in the end, it wasn't worth installing an SSD twice the value of the actual machine. So in went a throwaway 7200rpm 160GB hdd.
Next step is to look to implement a few of these.
UPDATE: Which helped the Windows10 RAM consumption; but with the new 2GB of memory, and the 16MB of hdd cache, along with a slightly customized Xubuntu install (the gained usability over Lubuntu was worth the extra RAM consumption). I have a very capable atom-based netbook with windows-like office/web productivity!
So Xubuntu boots by default, with W10 installed as backup. Score!
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