So, what happened was this.

We brought the laptop into Best Buy along with my receipt that states I paid for 512MB of RAM. They took a look and saw that it was indeed showing only 504MB. They opened it up and low and behold beneath the 256MB chip was the 512MB one I’d bought. Supposedly.

After diagnostics and the taking out of my original chip and starting up the computer they discovered that the 512 was only outputting 256.

Now, they say that sometimes this happens that a chip at the manufacturer’s gets in the wrong box or something and is labeled and packaged incorrectly. So I bought a 256MB chip that was disguised as a 512MB.

Christine thinks they’re full of crap, but either way, they swapped out the wannabe 512 with a real 512 and I am now running at 760MB of RAM.

So, while I was still screwed over by them a bit, at least it was all taken care of in the end. So I’m a happy camper. They are safe from my wrath for now…. muahahahahahahaha. :)