Netbook RAM memory

Essentially, programs are opened into RAM which has much faster read/write times. The more RAM, the more you can have opened into it rather than directly accessing the hard drive.

 Of all the messing around you do to revive an old computer - removing software - defrag - etc adding extra RAM has the most dramatic effect of all.  It can turn a sluggish laptop into a blistering performer even just browsing can become a much more pleasant experience because of the increase in speed and response times. However if you are happy with the performance already - no point in buying xtra RAM.

Upgrading the Ram in my Lenova Netbook made it much quicker and stable.  In my case there was 500mb fixed and the upgrading company put in another 2gb.  Suprisingly my machine worked with 2.5.

For the extra £45 is was very worthwhile (including installation)

Do it!  Don't wait!  Do it now!

Your machine will be MUCH happier with 2Gb.  There wil be less disk activity (which is good for perfoemance AND long-term reliability), better performance all round.

For things bigger than netbooks - I'd go for 4Gb.  (Actually I'd go for 6 or 8Gb, but I'm greedy and I run virtual machines and 64-bit operating systems).

Hi Charles,

I am an independent IT consultant and my clients have XP to Win 7 and Office 2003 to 2010.  I have so many different VMs that have different configurations.  so if one of them call me and said I have problem with my Excel 2003 on XP, then I would wake up the instance that have the same configuration.

What VM you are using?

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy, Healthy, Prosperous 2011!

-- Regards,

chan_a@algconsultings.com

http://ca.linkedin.com/in/alginc

http://www.algconsultings.com/

I've found that a laptop running Windows XP improves dramatically by changing RAM from 1GB to 2GB. But Windows 7 Home Premium is much thirstier, as is loaded on many netbooks. As @cverrier says, 4GB is a better minimum, even for a netbook if you want to run more than 1 or 2 apps together. Watch out to see if more than 2GB can actually be installed.

A small laptop that can take 4GB may well be a better investment for Windows 7.