How much RAM do you need?
It's been a thorny question ever since the first Mac appeared, and the first user promptly tried to fill it up with applications.
During the 1980's and much of the 90's RAM was expensive. Very expensive, so users typically got by on the amount that came fitted to their computer. Heavy users sucked their teeth and bought the absolute minimum required to make their working day bearable. However at some point in the late 90's all that began to change. New large scale manufacturing in the far east saw the price of RAM tumble to unheard of lows, just at the time that OS's and applications began to consume ever larger amounts of precious memory.
In these days of cheap and easy to install memory, the quick answer to the question is, as much as you can fit into your computer. For most consumer Macs this means between 2 and 4 GB of RAM. This allows OS X all the room it needs as well as giving your applications enough space to ensure that they don't need to waste time tediously swapping information in and out of the hard disk.
To run OS X 10.4, you should really be looking at a minimum of 1GB of RAM, anything less will have big performance issues for most Macs. Luckily most Macs built within the last five years will be able to work with this much RAM. If your Mac is older than this you should really be maxing it out as a matter of course.
If you need to know how much and what type of memory you will need then try downloading the super useful app Mac Tracker. Once you have your RAM requirements nailed down, then get in touch with us here and we can arrange to supply and fit the memory for you.
Posted on 20th Feb 2008
