Kuki had several bugs and Ubuntu proper was crying out. I had a spare 512MB 4200 DDR2 lying round so I took the plunge. I followed a guide on ebay and removed the motherboard to upgrade the RAM. It took me about 20 minutes in total (the guides often say an hour but I have a lot more skill than I realised).
Here is what I did.
1) Remove all screws from the base making a note of where they all went
2) Remove the keyboard (usual clips)
3) Detach keyboard and trackpad leads from motherboard
4) Remove screws from heatsink which is attached to the bezel.
5) Carefully remove bezel
6) Detach wireless module and SSD unit from the motherboard
By now the motherboard should just be rested in place
7) Tilt motherboard upwards and carefully insert RAM module into the SODIMM slot, I found this easy but I have inserted RAM more times than I have been to a pub.
8) Reconnect everything and reassemble.
When I put everything back together I got a none system disk error. It turned out the ribbon cable from the SSD to the motherboard was slightly loose, so had to take the damn thing apart again. All fixed now though.
Here is a tip rather than re-assemble everything only to find something dosn't work reconnect the SSD but but leave the bezel, keyboard, and trackpad off. Use a USB keyboard and make sure the system boots into the operating system then do a quick RAM test. It saves all the hassle of putting it back together only to find the motherboard needs to be removed again.
Why acer could not put an access hatch on the bottom of the laptop I don't know, it would save all this faff.
Either way my netbook now has 1GB of RAM and it runs Ubuntu 10.4 with Gnome perfectly. All drivers work out of the box but I found disabled special effects speeds things up a lot.
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