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Memory Upgrade

Is your PC a little sluggish? A memory upgrade is probably the easiest, yet most beneficial upgrade any PC owner can do. At current market prices, it’s also one of the least expensive in terms of bang for your buck.

Background

Random access memory, or RAM, is a temporary data storage area for the operating system and the applications you are running. Without sufficient memory, this temporary data has to be stored on your hard drive in virtual memory. Accessing the virtual memory on the hard drive is thousands of times slower than accessing it in RAM. It doesn’t matter how fast your CPU is, if the data is coming from the hard drive you will have to wait. Generally, the rule of thumb is, the more memory you have, the better.

How much memory do I need? Well that depends on what you are doing with your PC. For most general users running Windows XP, 256 MB is the bare minimum you want to work with. Because pricing is quite reasonable, I would recommend 512 MB for most everyone running Windows XP and who are using the PC for email, web surfing, and word processing. If you are doing anything with detailed graphics, photo or video editing, or gaming, you should really consider a full gigabyte (1 GB).

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