With all due respect to Jim...
I have built 100's of systems and in each and every case, 64 or more Meg of
RAM does make a noticeable speed increase in application performance. At 32,
the Win9x GUI "eats" almost half of your Memory right from the get-go,
leaving 16 to 20 Meg for remaining application usage. After opening a
program such as IE 4.01 or Microsoft Outlook, your remaining memory drops
down to almost zero! Using Win9x's System Monitor will confirm these
readings. As Win9x does a lousy job of returning free memory after a program
has been completed, you will find yourself quickly running out of memory and
suffering machine slowdown unless you frequently reboot.

And in the case of high Processor intensive applications - ie: Adobe
PhotoShop, AutoCAD, Strata Studio Pro; you will have trouble even running
the app at 32, let alone get any performance out of your system with that
little of memory. My recommendations for an entry Win9x machine are: 64 for
home/business workstation; 128 for High-end (Graphics, CAD, Design) system.
For Win NT 4.0, 128 is the minimum I install, with 256 recommended for
systems running High-end 3-D applications (ie: 3D Studio Max, Lightwave).

My point is; the 32 Meg "trunk" of the car can be adequate for someone who
is apt to use just "Notepad" or perhaps a simple HTML editor, but in this
age of software "bloat", 32 will just not get the job done to the full
potential of the system.

Earl Douglass



-----Original Message-----

>Once you hit 32 Meg of RAM (and you have), adding more will
>not change the overall performance of your PC.  At levels above
>32 Meg, RAM is more like the trunk of a car.  More RAM means you
>can carry more stuff, but it will not make the car run faster.
>
>Jim Meagher

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