Memory magic brings machines back from the brink

Does the term chugging along ring true when describing your computer? Do you need to squeeze a bit more life out of your old beast, maybe consider upgrading the memory in your computer. Upgrading a computers memory is the easiest upgrade off all. Computer RAM is sort of like your brains short term memory, when your brain is adding numbers together, listening to people talk it is all going on in you short term memory. Computer memory is the same, it’s a computers working space, it’s the computers scratch pad to keep track of whats going on. Just like an alcoholic with no short term memory a computer without enough memory wont be at it’s best, the computer wont be able to do many things at once, things will be a little slow to get going, and things will stumble and fall every now and then, just like an alcoholic.

Having enough memory or RAM – Random Access Memory, working space of your computer – is an essential ingredient for an enjoyable computing experience, and healthy computer. Many people don’t realise that over time the applications and updates you install will use the computers Ram. Generally applications will only use memory while they are running but many applications will install a mini application or plug in that will always use a little memory. Camera and phone software always does this, it’s the reason the camera software knows the camera is plugged in. Printers always have software running keeping an eye on the ink and what-ever else printers think about. So even if the amount of Ram you started with was enough that can change over time. Add an operating system upgrade – Windows XP to Windows 7 – to that mix and you can easily find yourself running short of memory.

Signs that you are running low on memory include; taking a couple of minutes to start up, applications loading slowly, the hourglass coming up or sitting there thinking for long periods. If your hard drive light flashes constantly – thrashing – then you are probably very short of ram. Time to upgrade.

You can easily tell exactly how much memory your computer has by starting the task manager in Windows – right click on an empty part of the the task bar at the bottom of your screen and select Task Manager – then switch to the Performance tab. The block labelled ‘Physical Ram (MB)’ – MB meaning Megabytes – contains all the information on your computers memory. This is shown as KB – Kilobytes – on old machines and MB on newer systems. The numbers you want to see are Total Memory over 1000,000KB or 1000MB, both equivalent to 1GB – Gigabyte -.

If you have 1GB or less of memory just do it, get your computers RAM memory upgraded. You will give your computer a whole new lease on life, simply flip a couple of tabs, pop out the old sticks – RAM is built on small circuit boards called a stick – and put in the new sticks, that is it, done. The biggest performance increase is to be gained going from 1GB to 4GB. your computer will run faster and feel like its on steroids. To notice the move from 4GB to 8GB you would need to be a power user, 16GB is possible and affordable but very few people would actually use that much memory.

At the moment 8GB is the price performance king. You get the most amount of memory for not to much money, 4GB is plenty for most users and probably the amount I would suggest for the average computer. With any discussion of computer memory comes the limits of how much you can use. Computers come with two flavours of software at the moment, 32bit and 64bit. This refers to the amount of memory the computer can use. A 32bit computer can use 4GB of memory and a 64bit machine is pretty much unlimited at the moment. The other limitation to the amount of memory you can use is the number of slots available to hold the memory. Most laptops have only 1 or 2 slots to put memory in, most desktop PCs have 4 or 6 slots for memory. You should also consider how you use the computer when deciding on the amount of memory to install. Just general internet and video 4GB, if play games or use applications like Photoshop then you should think about 8GB.

If your keen to do the upgrade yourself but your not interested in learning everything about RAM remove the RAM from your computer, take it to your local computer shop and tell them you want more. When you get home chuck the new RAM in and off you go.

The easiest way to upgrade is of course to take your PC down to the computer shop or cook you local nerd dinner and get him to do the work. The upgrade shouldn’t cost more than $100 AUS for a 4GB upgrade, the memory itself should cost a little of $60 AUS for 4GB of memory.

It is highly recommended that you don’t put the old memory back into the computer, it can cause problems and they are really hard to diagnose problems. Give the old ram to someone with an old machine, preferably of the same age as your machine that way the memory should match.

Having enough Ram in your computer is essential, it makes a world of difference with the usability of the machine. Not only can it make your machine more instant or responsive but it will let you run many applications at once, letting you multi task. You may have heard the term Multi-Tasking with respect to computers but the real benefit of multi-tasking is it allows you to do more things at once. Playing music, surfing, mail, converting video can all be done together if a machine can multi-task properly.

Inside the box, tucked away in a corner of the computer hides the memory – RAM -, this memory can have a profound effect on your computers speed and your experience. Upgrading your computers memory will improve your computers speed and your computing experience. It’s the cheapest and easiest way to re-invigorate an old machine, delaying that upgrade for another six months. Get adventurous and pop the hood on your pc or take your computer to the shop for the upgrade it will be worth it.

Preparing.

• Before doing any work on your PC’s internals make sure you have turned it off at the power point.
• Make sure you aren’t ultra static, ground yourself.
• Pop the hood on – open – your pc, or in the case of a laptop open the underside flap to access the RAM slots.

Removing

• Find the memory sockets (pictures above)
• There are white locking tabs at each end of the memory stick, push them gently down and away to unlock.
• Unlock both tabs and lift out the stick.

Installing

• Ram has a notch off centre on the bottom of the stick, align that to the bump in the memory socket.
• With the white tabs of the memory socket opened push the stick gently in till it locks.
• Push the white locking tabs inwards to lock in the memory stick.
• If your so inclined clean the dust out of the inside of the PC to keep it healthy.
• Put the PC back together and turn it back on.