Upgraded my Asus Eee PC to 1GB of RAM

Recently I complained about the Asus Eee PC choking on 512 MB RAM. So I decided to upgrade. Asus has announced that it will honor warranty of units with broken warranty stickers, but I wasn’t sure if this applied to my territory. Still, I took the risk. But I didn’t want to totally get rid of my warranty stickers, though. And the shop I bought my Eee from had their own warranty sticker, so I made sure these were intact, just in case they won’t honor warranty without their stickers.

First I went off to buy a Kingston 1GB DDR2-667 SODIMM stick, which is dirt cheap these days.

Then with a bit of sticker backing / wax paper, a precision flathead screwdriver, cotton swabs and some WD-40, I proceeded to remove my warranty stickers. Oh, and you need a lot of patience.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Spray some WD-40 onto a cotton swab, until the tip is damp with the lubricant.
2. Swab the surface of the sticker until the lubricant has been thoroughly absorbed (repeat #1 if needed).
3. Spray some WD-40 onto the tip of the screwdriver.
4. Wedge the tip of the screwdriver underneath a corner/edge of the sticker and slowly peel it off by wedging the screwdriver in a few millimeters at a time.
5. Apply lubricant to the screwdriver again once it becomes dry.
6. Repeat the last two steps.

The sticker should now be easy to remove, as the adhesive side no longer sticks to the surface of the Eee too much. Your main concern here would be that the sticker doesn’t disintegrate. These warranty stickers are made to rip apart when you try to remove them.

Once you have completely removed a sticker, transfer it onto some wax paper or sticker paper backing, so you can easily replace it when the need arises.

The results:

RAM and mini PCIe slots of the Asus Eee PC. The RAM stick was easy enough to replace.

Don’t try this at home, kids! Okay, you can, but be sure to contact your local Asus centre first, to confirm if they will honor warranty without the stickers.