How much RAM have you got?

I'm shopping for another 4 GB DDR3L module, as my laptop has spaces for three more. (As much as I hate opening the case, I did it when I had to replace the ailing HDD.)

 

Probably overkill for 99% of people, no matter what OS they are using.

 

My first laptop was a Belnea Notebook with 1Gb running Vista (later it ran much better on Ubuntu). When I had a bespoke desktop built I reckoned 4Gb more than enough. My Lenovo G500 (Ubuntu) has 4Gb. The average now is 8Gb. Pretty soon it will be 16Gb. And so it goes.

 

OK I see, so it's not because you are running lots of apps at the same time or anything. Like I said, I personally would be happy with 16GB, so that I don't constantly have to monitor RAM usage.

 

I had a choice. My G500 only has 4GB, although it does well considering. 8GB is about average now. How long before 16GB is average?

 

I just hope that 16GB will soon become the standard, but it all depends of price developments. I don't know about macOS and Ubuntu, but Win 10 and 11 are way more resource hungry and browsers based on Chromium are getting more bloated by the day.

 

This is a big reason why I run Unix. Brave seems far quicker and less bloated than either Chrome or Firefox.

 

My laptop - 8GB

 

Try a test:

https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/

 

Is this good or bad?

 

OK, comparison with only one tab open:

 

I just ran in to a guy with 128GB. I'm thinking if I ever get around to a new PC, it will have at least 64GB and expendable to more. The memory helps at lot with multiple programs and would improve compile times on some program I compile.

Of course my current PC would have to force me in to a new one.

 

For the test, Brave is faster than Firefox.

 

You must be using some very memory intensive software to need 64GB.

 

OK right, thanks. Brave does seem pretty zippy though.

 

I build my third party Slackware packages from source. There are a few programs, libraries that take a long time to compile on this 8GB system. Having more memory available while help speed that up considerably. With VirtualBox machines I could run more that one at a time if I wanted to. My Windows 10 machine gets 4096MB of memory. For what I use it for it's slow yet manageable for the program I use it for. If I start watching for example YouTube videos on the Host Machine, things can bog down a lot, swap file usage goes up too. My session yesterday ran for 4 hours and 23 minutes. most of that was catching up on updates not using the program. Also video rendering and programs like Blender like more memory.

 

Even zippier on Mac.

 

So are you saying that macOS and Ubuntu use less RAM as well as the apps that run on top of them, when compared to Windows?

 

I think it's pretty obvious. My old Belnea notebook had 1Gb of RAM and always struggled with Vista. When I converted it to Ubuntu it was far, far faster. Windows is bloated by comparison.

 

OK I see, that's pretty cool. Yes Windows should be streamlined way more, I'm guessing that's why M$ is designing a completely new Windows, but I don't think it will be released anytime soon. And perhaps that's why Apple asks so much for an upgrade to 16GB RAM, because they believe most people won't need it. Or perhaps they are just greedy.

 

I'm guessing Apple are just greedy.

 

Yep. We must not forget that Tim Cook came from Compaq where hardware was proprietary and upgrades were expensive.

 

Sounds about right.

 

I do have to say that I'm very interested in what the price will be for the MacBook Air 2022 with the new M2 chip. It will launch in a couple of months but I'm guessing the cheapest model will still offer a 256GB SSD with 8GB RAM.

 

It'll probably be an ARM and a leg lol. Meanwhile I'll have to slum it with my old fashioned MBA.