How much RAM do you really need?
Never enough!
Recently I have been considering getting them upgraded to 4GB at least, but really do not know how significantly that might speed them up. I also wonder how much better they would perform with 8 or even 16 Gigs on them, since I think the 64-bit CPUs might be able to handle it.
Is it worth the extra expense?
More is usually better- depending on what you do with the machine. Don’t get more than 4 GB unless you have a 64 bit operating system though. I max everything, always.
Ping!
Depends on what you’re doing. Bring up the disk monitor and watch for the amount of thrashing going on.
One memory hog program is Firefox if it's been left on a while. I've found that it often has substantial memory leaks, and can take a lot of space if it's been on for a few days. (That can be reclaimed by exiting and restarting the program.) YMMV, of course.
“...alternate/backup have 2CB”? Sorry, that should read 2GB, not 2CB.
Need to type slower and more awake. :)
A basic machine handles that sort of thing just fine.
Now, if you're editing video, or playing certain games, then more RAM and a better processor may be of some benefit.
But overall, the capabilities of the machines outweigh the needs of almost all consumers. Corporations want you to buy "more", but few people need "more".
4GB would be the bare minimum I would recommend for a Win 7 machine. You will see a significant increase in response speed going up to 8GB, and then a diminishing return to about 16GB. After that, unless you are running several very intensive programs, you will not see any speed increase.
Well, a lot of it has to do with resource usage.
If you remember the Commodore 128, which had 128kb of RAM there was some pretty amazing stuff they did — to include a graphical operating-environment; see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_%288-bit_operating_system%29
The Amiga also had some impressive abilities, despite what would be considered meager system resources by today’s standards.
So the question becomes so much more interesting when you consider how effectively you are using what you have.
When it comes to memory, more is ALWAYS better.
Computers are so fast now that they have to have brakes on them because of the limitation of the speed of light across the length of the motherboard. Unless you are doing some kind of heavy math, you won’t know the difference on processing, but, you will on memory.
Graphics memory is another place that more is better.
I remember working on the RCA301 with 10K memory. :)
For routine work:
XP works well with 1MB
Vista works well with 2MB
Windows 7 works well with 4MB
Less than those isn’t a great idea.
For heavy duty loads like various sorts of virtual machine usage, more is better, much better.
The biggest speed bump comes from a SSD instead of a HD.
4 is what I have on most machines. It seems to be the bang for buck for business machines. If are running programs for photo editing, videos, large spread sheets and the like you can’t get to much. I settle for 16GB.
640K
You want as much RAM that it takes to allow you to set the swap file to zero which will speed up your machine if you have enough RAM, check the monitors to see how the swap file is utilized. With the swap file at zero, MS will say you won’t be able to get the diagnostic dump MS supposedly uses to determine what caused the abend.
The funny thing is that in over 20 years of using NT, not once was I asked to upload that file and when I suggested it once, the engineer laughed.
Back in 1972 or 73 I had a computer programming class at a local community college. I remember one day the instructor pointing to a hand held Texas Instrument calculator I had with me and saying that would be the only computing power we would ever need..........LOL!
Need?
.
Like so many things in life, bigger is better. Period.
If you are talking PCs and you still run XP 32bit, you only need 2 Gb because that is all it can access. Anything above XP I would say to get what you can afford. I try to have at least 6 Gb on a laptop, but on some of my workstations I have 8, 16, or 32 Gb. Usually the difference between 6 and 32 Gb is not noticeable when just doing web access and simple things like word processing, but when I require continuous number crunching, opening and closing numerous files automatically, and running numerous background programs, the 16 and 32 Gb systems leaves the others in the dust. Don’t forget to get as much graphics memory that you can afford, especially if you are doing gaming or anything that uses rendering.