by moderate force, he means 'holy crap I'm going to break this slab of silicon'

Ram ports are usually very hard to get to because manufacturers like to put as much stuff in front of them as they can (such as hard disks!) You may have to remove more than just the old ram sticks to get there.

Make sure you aren't trying to put more memory in than your computer knows how to use. If the total amount of ram you can use is 1 gb and you have 3 ram slots, don't put a 1 gb card in each slot, it won't do you any good.