ram

Embarrassing admission of the month: before last Friday, I'd never replaced my own RAM.

Honestly, the explanation's simple: I tend to buy new laptops before I consider upgrading RAM. The last time I considered a RAM boost was probably a decade ago, and back then I paid to have it installed. I also found the idea of RAM slightly less immediately appealing. Upgrading a hard drive? Sure, lots of storage space. New processor? Faster speeds. But RAM...for many people, it might lack a certain sexiness or essential quality that justifies the upgrade.

It took my friend persistently reminding me that his RAM upgrade on the same laptop model (a late 2008 aluminum MacBook) paid huge dividends on performance to finally pull the trigger. I'm glad I did.… Read more

Adding more RAM to your Mac is one of the easiest ways to increase the capability of the system. In addition, at around $40 for an 8GB upgrade these days, it is quite cheap to do so.

By upgrading to at least 4GB or preferably 8GB, you can see a notable decrease in load times for programs and files, especially when you already have a number of applications open. You may also notice a reduction in slowdowns and the presence of the spinning color wheel, both of which largely happen when applications have to wait for the system to manage … Read more

Lost amid the talk of Apple's new iPad yesterday was a mention of how much RAM the device features. But a new report claims to have the answer.

Apple's new iPad comes with 1GB of RAM, according to The Verge, citing sources. Although Apple has not confirmed that claim, it would make sense. Apple's first iPad launched with 256MB of RAM onboard. The second iPad bumped that figure to 512MB of RAM. If history is to be our guide, this time around, Apple's new iPad should come with 1GB of RAM.

At 1GB of RAM, the … Read more

The memory in your system, commonly referred to as RAM, is the work space the system uses to store executable code and loaded data. If your system is slowing down then you may be low on RAM. Although you can install more or free some up by quitting some running programs, first it may help to analyze how much RAM your programs actually are using.

If you open up the Activity Monitor utility on your system and go to the Memory section, you can see a pie chart of the system's physical memory usage, where generally the larger the … Read more

It's already been a great year for the Danish headphone designers over at Aiaiai, and it's about to get even better.

The company's TMA-1 DJ headphones recently earned a spot in an exhibit at SFMOMA documenting contemporary industrial designs influenced by Dieter Rams, and its latest headphones, the Capital, are already garnering shrieks of schoolgirl glee from audiophiles who appreciate equal parts form and function.

Aiaiai supplied the audio technology for the Capital headphones, but once again leaned on Scandinavian design group Kibisi to design their form. The two made a great first impression last year with the release of the Tracks supra-aural headphones, and Kibisi's simple design ethos is made clear again in the Capital.… Read more

There's no shortage of programs that promise to boost your computer's performance by clearing its memory. But think twice before taking their claims at face value.

Your computer's RAM is a fast, temporary workspace for active tasks. So if your computer begins to slow down, one of the first things you should check is whether your system is running out of memory.

The system continuously manages and optimizes memory by writing unused contents to disk. When you run low on memory, though, this process may encroach on active computing tasks, which will significantly slow them down.

So … Read more

A bad memory module (RAM) can cause unpredictable behavior in a Windows system, including the dreaded blue screen of death. If you suspect that your RAM may be faulty, you can run a memory test to confirm that you have a bad memory module.

Laptop and desktop PC makers occasionally provide preinstalled utilities that sometimes include a memory test. Feel free to try out those utilities, especially if your computer is under warranty and you want to make a warranty claim. Manufacturers will often require you to run their support utilities first, before agreeing to replace hardware or move forward … Read more

Yesterday Apple released an update to Safari, which it claims, among other issues, fixes two prominent ones that resulted in high memory usage and periodic instances where loaded pages would flash white (seen when switching to a different window or at times when interacting with the page).

Unfortunately even though Safari no longer flashes loaded pages white, there may still be instances where you can encounter similar behaviors. With version 5.0, Apple split Safari's process into two components: a main Safari parent program, and a child process called Safari Web Content that is responsible for rendering the scripts … Read more

Happy Cyber Monday! I've always preferred this "holiday" to Black Friday, as it allows me to shop in my preferred garb: bathrobe and slippers. (Tried that on a Black Friday once; I am no longer welcome in the mall.)

Indeed, this is arguably this biggest shopping day of the year for the ol' Cheapskate, as all the deals are, by definition, online. I'll be discussing some of my favorites live today on CNET's Holiday Help Desk, which airs at 3 p.m. ET, noon PT.

In the meantime, here are some assorted Cyber Monday goodies … Read more