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Is 4GB RAM enough? (1 Viewer)

B

Baron Birder

Well-known member
I am ready to replace my 7 year old desktop with a Lenovo Thinkpad.

I use it for the usual emails, internet and Office etc. My most resource hungry is going to be Photoshop Elements 10. I currently shoot only in JPEG but may swap to Raw in the future.

The question is, will 4GB of RAM be plenty or do I need to go for 6 or 8?

This is the set up I have in mind.

http://www.equanet.co.uk/catalogue/...ps/Lenovo-ThinkPad-L530-2481/N2S2TUK/LENNB240

Thanks

BB
 
With most laptops, adding RAM is easy, one or 2 screws and 2 minutes of your time.

A single 4GB stick for that Lenovo is £14.39, a matched pair of sticks (8GB total) £29.99: http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.aspx?model=ThinkPad L530&Cat=RAM

The hardware manual for the L430/L530 series is available as a 36MB pdf file: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/guides-and-manuals/detail.page?DocID=UM014761

Basically the more programs you have loaded and the longer the machine is in use per session, the more RAM you need to reduce the hard drive 'thrashing' from excessive virtual memory (paging operations) usage.
 
Andrew Rowlands said:
With most laptops, adding RAM is easy, one or 2 screws and 2 minutes of your time.
Click to expand...

I bought some extra RAM for my laptop last year. I sat looking at it for 3 weeks, then with shaking hands I unscrewed the compartment. Took a quick look and shut it up again.

A few days later, I thought right... go for it.... in 5 minutes it was in and up and running!!!

Really... if I can do it anyone can, honest!
 
Hello BB,


My experience is that today's "ample" RAM will be insufficient in three or four years. Since you keep your computers for five years or more, you should either buy 8 GM of Ram or be assured that it can be upgraded in three or four years.
I have upgraded two laptops and iMac over the last dozen years without difficulty. Just follow directions.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur Pinewood :hi:
 
Pinewood said:
Hello BB,


My experience is that today's "ample" RAM will be insufficient in three or four years. Since you keep your computers for five years or more, you should either buy 8 GM of Ram or be assured that it can be upgraded in three or four years.
I have upgraded two laptops and iMac over the last dozen years without difficulty. Just follow directions.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur Pinewood :hi:
Click to expand...

An excellent point
Thanks
BB
 
I too like to use my computers longer than many others (I have MacBook Pro that after more than 6 years still works just fine - but it hasn't got the memory to run today's Lightroom, for example). I agree that in that situation, you end up having to max out the RAM eventually since programs keep becoming more and more memory-hungry.

So unless it's made far more expensive than the cost of the hardware justifies I tend to max mine out when I buy them.

Andrea
 
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