I have noticed that PC's and Mac's rarely come equipped with enough RAM (of whatever flavor) to run the OS that they shipped with & a big application (Adobe Pagemaker v6+, Photoshop v4+, Premiere, AfterEffects, etc) with large documents open, completely in the RAM space (not virtual memory, which is hard drive space).

If you have the store or the manufacturer add the memory, you may pay 3x what a 'net discounter charges for the part. This is money that could be spent on other things.

First, you need to know what kind of memory that your motherboard supports and what the maximum quantity of memory could be if you installed the highest density (SIMMs, DIMMs, SO-DIMMs, whatever) cards available.

Second, you need to determine the budget available.

Third, find a low cost source with in-stock merchandise. I try to get within 5% of the lowest price, but will pay attention to shipping charges and feedback on newsgroups. Saving $2 is NOT worth hassling with a supplier who may or may not have shipped or shipped the wrong part.

Fourth and perhaps most important: Pay with a credit card. Do not send cash, check, money order, or other negotiable instrument. You don't want to sue them, you want the product. Let your credit card company sue them.

Here are a few of my favorite sources for RAM:
www.ramseeker.com excellent updating and near lowest prices available
www.pricewatch.com- be careful to verify type with vendor
http://www.macresource.pair.com/mrp/ramwatch.shtml Good median price tracking, but not the absolute bottom.

General low-price search: http://dealmac.com/tools.html

Don't be afraid to search the Mac areas for PC parts. Mac owners have been scrounging for PC SCSI drives for ever and newer Mac's use a lot of standard pc hardware.

Even if you let Windows manage your memory, your computer will work better and quicker (all other things being equal) with more RAM. When deciding on which size of RAM to buy, tend toward getting the highest density because you have a limited number of sockets to install them into. There may be a slight premium to getting one PC-100/256MB DIMM over getting two PC-100/128MB DIMMs, but you may have only 2 sockets open on the motherboard and may wish to get more RAM in the future without removing what you have.

RTFM, loosely translated "Read the manual first".

Rufus13

Return to The Alpha Group Web Page

All materials at this site not otherwise credited are Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Trip Williams. All rights reserved. May be reproduced for personal use only. Use of any material contained herein is subject to stated terms or written permission.