Perhaps youve heard that upgrading your memory is important. Or maybe youve heard about upgrading the processor, motherboard, or graphics card. There are many upgrades that are possible for most computers, its just a matter of getting the best bang for the buck.
Most people find that installing more memory in your computer can be quite cheap, and is usually pretty helpful. It allows you to do more tasks, more efficiently. For instance having more memory could help an excel spreadsheet to run a calculation faster. Opening up two Internet browsers wouldnt cause the whole computer to get slower. Even opening up a computer program to run it would be faster.
In todays computing world, you need at a very minimum 512MB of memory, and if youre going to be using Windows Vista, youd be better served with at least 1GB of memory. While youll find high-end systems with 2-4GB or more of memory.
However, knowing that you need memory is the easy part. Finding what memory you need for your specific computer is the hard part. It would be much simpler if it was like DVDs, every DVD runs in every DVD player. However, memory comes in different sizes, speed ratings and they are not all compatible with each other. Take note that laptop memory is generally a different size than what you can find in desktops. So, you wont find it interchangeable. The first place to look is in the users manual or any documentation you have with the computer, or on the manufacturers website.
So, once you have the right size figured out, you have to go one step extra. You have to find out if you have the room to install more memory in your computer. Each computer has a limited amount of physical space to install the memory, and a limit to how much memory can be used. So, youll have to find out how much physical space is available, and what the impact will be if you have to switch smaller chips with bigger chips. For instance if your computer has two slots filled with 256MB chips for a total of 512MB, and you bought two 512MB chips. You would only have 1GB of memory, and the old 256MB chips will not be able to be used. Its a little complicated, but worth the trouble to figure out.
A fantastic resource for looking up what kind of memory you should use is www.crucial.com. They have many of the makes and models of all major manufacturers, and provide guidelines for purchasing and installing more memory.
Even if it looks complicated, in many cases upgrading the memory in your computer is the best way to improve the performance of your computer. It can delay the need for a new computer by months or years. Dont feel hampered by slow performance, upgrade today.
