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How much do you know about the memory
in your computer?
There are
two kinds of memory in every computer: storage
memory (the disk drive, where your files are stored) and physical memory (RAM, or Random Access Memory). When
we tell our clients that they need more memory, they often respond by
saying that, yes, they need to clean up their disk. But that’s not the
memory we are referring to, and cleaning up your disk drive, or even
defragmenting it, will have virtually no discernable effect on performance.
However,
adding additional physical memory modules such as the one shown above can
have a significant effect on
performance. Physical memory, or RAM, is the “thinking space” of a
computer. When you run a program, your computer loads the software and data
into memory. When the memory is full, the computer must then swap out some
of the memory contents to the disk drive in order to make room for new
stuff, and when that happens performance takes a major nosedive. In extreme cases you may get a warning from
Windows telling you that you are “low on system resources” (why don’t they
just say “memory”?), or your computer could lock up or even crash.
One major
issue is that the operating system itself takes a lot of memory. You can
easily find that Windows is taking up all the memory you have, leaving
little or nothing left for other applications. Here are some examples:
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Operating System
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By Itself
Uses
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Typical
Config
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We Recommend
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Windows 95/98
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60MB? *
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32-64MB
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128MB+
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Windows 2000
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80-100MB
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128MB
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256MB+
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Windows XP
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110MB+
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128-256MB
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512MB-1GB
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*Windows
98 does not actually tell you how much memory it uses.
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If you
often run more than one program at a time, your performance will really
suffer. For ordinary Office applications, you need at least 64MB more than Windows
takes. For editing photos or video, or for extremely large spreadsheets,
consider 256MB+ more than Windows needs.
Memory is
not particularly expensive to add. You can usually add 128MB or 256MB for
well under $100 installed. If your computer has less memory than what we
recommend above, consider adding more memory before you buy a new computer
– that may be all you need to get the most out of your current system.
There’s an
old saying, modified for the computer world: You can never be too rich, too
thin or have too much RAM!
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