> So new CherryPals are actually being manufactured?

I don't know. Maybe it's stock that was manufactured in the past already, or it's no stock at all and will be manufactured sometime in the future.

> Or they always had this amount of RAM, but crappy system software was just
> able to use half of it?

Seems unlikely. The manufacturer says:

"Memory:256MB(512MB optional)"
http://www.limepc.com/x1.shtml

So it seems Cherrypal just made use of this option.