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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pyslent who wrote (70635)	10/31/2007 4:38:30 PM
From: Doren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213182

Memory more than likely. Depends on whether you are talking latency, which is the slight hesitation before your commands are executed or raw power to do stuff like crunch video or have multiple apps running at the same time. Leopard might be slightly better at latency making your machine slightly more snappy. RAM will make everything else run faster. When your machine runs out of available ram it writes and reads to the drive which is light years slower. More RAM is never bad. I'd do the RAM.

To: pyslent who wrote (70635)	10/31/2007 5:12:35 PM
From: aaplfan	Respond to of 213182

I would guess that unless you have an unusually light workload, 9 times out of 10 more memory would be a much better investment. You can look in Activity Monitor to get a sense for how much memory your system is using. There's a nice utility called MenuMeters that I actually find more useful as it will do things like give you a quick status of how much VM is actually being used as well as a visual indication of hard drive activity (usually, the more VM being actively used = poorer performance) etc. One simple test you can do on your own: after you've been using your computer for a while (i.e. you've loaded whatever apps/documents/web pages you normally would) simply try command-tabbing between several applications. If you hear a lot of disk activity just to activate another, already loaded, application... that's virtual memory and it's over an order of magnitude slower than physical memory. I've got 2GB of RAM in my current iMac and I can 'feel' it start to hit virtual memory and can tolerate it up until the point where I'm 'living in' virtual memory (i.e. the system is actively using 2+ GB of virtual memory.) In an optimally performing system, some virtual memory may be used as the system is smart enough to shove loaded data/code that isn't being used off into VM to free the RAM for something that actually needs it. The problem is when you really don't have as much RAM as you need and the system is having to constantly swap things in and out of memory to get the job done.

To: pyslent who wrote (70635)	10/31/2007 5:14:49 PM
From: inaflash	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213182

I would definitely recommend an upgrade on any Intel machine for the performance benefits alone. Leopard is faster. I know people are always talking about the performance benefits of more memory, but I haven't seen that quantified. I'm currently running my Macbook in stock configuration (512 MB). It hasn't been painfully slow (in either Windows or OS X mode), but OTOH, it's definitely not snappy. Do you think I'd be better off buying more memory (I can get 2GB for $40), or by installing Leopard? Which gives more bang for the buck? Pick your favorite answer: 1) Neither. Get a new MacBookPro with faster processor, more memory and Leopard pre-installed to maximize your "snappyness" and Apple stock price. Expensive solution. 2) Neither. Lose some fat by turning off and disabling unused processor and memory vampires and leeches. Cheapest solution. index-site.com 3) RAM. If running original MacBook and many applications simultaneously or memory hogs (video, photo, Microsoft, Adobe). 4) Leopard. If processor is Core 2 Duo. 5) Both. They're both cheap and worthy upgrades. Value solution.

To: pyslent who wrote (70635)	10/31/2007 6:35:58 PM
From: Cogito	Respond to of 213182

>>I know people are always talking about the performance benefits of more memory, but I haven't seen that quantified. I'm currently running my Macbook in stock configuration (512 MB). It hasn't been painfully slow (in either Windows or OS X mode), but OTOH, it's definitely not snappy. Do you think I'd be better off buying more memory (I can get 2GB for $40), or by installing Leopard? Which gives more bang for the buck?<< Pyslent - Why not both, as the man said. Do the memory upgrade for sure, because it's so cheap, and will make a big difference. Then do Leopard and get the extra bump. - Allen