Quite often lately I've been running out of RAM because of the applications I run (Opera, 3dsmax, Photoshop) on my laptop. At the moment it has 256MB of DDR 266 RAM and is shared with the video card. I need an extra 256 MB but don't know which sort to buy. I have a HP Compaq nx9005 laptop, and it seems to be picky with what RAM I use in it. Crucial RAM seems fine and will probably work, but it's rocketed in price recently and HP’s “branded” RAM is always very expensive. I found some Samsung RAM at a more reasonable price, but I don't know if it'll work. How would I find out what RAM will work with my laptop? After buying some cheapo RAM that didn't work, I don't want to repeat this scenario. Thanks.

You already know the answer. In addition to Crucial's configator, Kingston also has a similar feature on thier website. I don't know if they guarantee the memory to work, like Crucial does.