I purchased about a month ago a Compaq Presario laptop (of course having HL
installed on it as well :)  )  and it's working great..  However, even
though in the actual specs of the unit says 256 MB RAM on the box and sheet,
I checked out of curiousity just last night in Control Panel > System >
General tab and for some reason it says 192 MB ?!  What gives here, have I
been shorted for real?!  So, I first contacted Compaq by e-mail-- of course
it'll be quite a while until I get a friggin' response despite the
"auto-confirm".  Then I called their supposed "24/7" Compaq tech support
line and they're closed on the weekends!  I have no choice but to try and
get a hold of them because the store where I purchased this can't do
anything about it as this unit has the typical one-year warranty and the
store covers the 2-year extended plan.

So, in the meantime until who-knows-when, TUESDAY maybe (as July 1st over
here is Canada Day on Monday) while I friggin' wait unti then, does anyone
have any idea ?  For starters, could it be : a) the OS can't properly
display the ACTUAL RAM on-board, b) Compaq actually stiffed me of the
specified RAM,  c) the unit does contain the full 256 MB RAM as specified,
BUT maybe not FULLY functioning (ie. some defective chip out of the batch in
the slots?), or d) The missing difference of the RAM (64 MB) is probably by
chance allocated to other system resources.  Again, I am aware this ain't
tech support, but there are a fair bit of you out there that seem to
demonstrate quite a bit of knowledge on hardware/software and what not.
Plus, just to see if anyone simply has a clue on this, or has been through
this similiar scenario.

All the same, I'll have to wait through this long weekend and see when I
contact Compaq..

Thanks in advance.