Computer Memory Upgrade

[PAUL161]

My Toshiba lap top only has 4 gig of memory, it will take up to 16 gig, which are available, what will be the benefit of this upgrade? PJ

 

[GregW]

There may be no benefit. It depends on how close you get to the limit of what you have. Running Task Manager in Windows or System Monitor in Linux while you have all the programs you normally have running will give you an idea of what you need.

 

[PAUL161]

Thanks Greg.

 

[TR3driver]

Also depends on what you are doing with it at the time. Working with things like high resolution scanned documents can take a lot, while just surfing the web and checking email takes much less.

When current usage starts getting close to to what you have for physical memory, the system will start trying to move less used sections to the hard drive. Since access time for the hard drive can be 100,000 times longer or more, it doesn't take very many misses for things to slow way down.

If you are looking for more performance, look into replacing the hard drive with SSD. They fit the same, so any laptop can make the change, and the performance difference is substantial.

 

[DrEntropy]

If you are looking for more performance, look into replacing the hard drive with SSD. They fit the same, so any laptop can make the change, and the perfoance difference is substantial.

I'll second that.

 

[John Turney]

I need an upgrade to the one between my ears. It's slowing down.

 

[DavidApp]

Are you getting the DOS message "File Not Found"

David

I need an upgrade to the one between my ears. It's slowing down.

 

[John Turney]

Are you getting the DOS message "File Not Found"

David

That's the one! :highly_amused:

 

[GregW]

Also depends on what you are doing with it at the time. Working with things like high resolution scanned documents can take a lot, while just surfing the web and checking email takes much less.

You might be surprised about web browsers. Chrome uses North of a gig with 4 tabs open. I stopped using Firefox years ago because it was a real resource hog.

 

[JPSmit]

You might be surprised about web browsers. Chrome uses North of a gig with 4 tabs open. I stopped using Firefox years ago because it was a real resource hog.

I find this with Chrome - is there an efficient alternative?

 

[DavidApp]

I use Opera. Seems to work well for me.

David