How much RAM do you really need?
When it comes to RAM, the traditional advice is to buy as much as you can afford. These days, though, paying for the largest available memory option could mean wasting a lot of money.
To be fair, a typical PC running Windows XP might have shipped with just 256MB of RAM, so switching between applications often meant a tedious and noisy wait while Windows shunted the active program’s dataset onto your hard disk and loaded the information required for the incoming one into memory. Increasing the RAM was a quick way to make your system more responsive – you could easily quadruple the base allocation before experiencing diminishing returns.
Thankfully, we’re not in that world any more. Most modern systems come with at least 8GB of memory, plus fast SSDs that make virtual memory access far swifter. Even so, the suspicion that more RAM is always better persists.
There are a few reasons for this. One is the simple fact that many laptops are offered in both 8GB and 16GB variants. The mere existence of a larger option sparks a certain anxiety as to whether the smaller allocation will be enough – and that’s heightened by the fact that it’s almost never possible to add extra memory to a laptop after purchase, should you subsequently find yourself wishing for more headroom.
Then there’s good old human pride. Some computers are bought explicitly for a lightweight role, but those of us who dabble in fields such as
