this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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Playing devils advocate here: As someone who deals with stuff like that, you also wouldn’t buy the base model mac. The average computer user can get by with 8GB just fine and it’s not like you can’t configure Macs with more than that.
That of course doesn’t justify the abhorrent price of the upgrades…
And here I am, putting 16gb in every machine I work on because it's so damn cheap there's no reason not to future proof
I mean, same. The difference in price for 8GB and 16GB is negligible, especially if you want dual channel on desktops
My girlfriends mum wanted to know why her laptop was slow... It was because HP thought that 4gb of ram is acceptable in 2022 (when the laptop was sold). Granted ram wasn't as cheap then as it is now... Still I paid £30 for a brand new 8gb DDR4 sodimm, there's not reason hp couldn't do that. It's annoying the corners these company cut.
My experience is, that 4GB is just about useable for a bit of web browsing and similar stuff. Even on windows 11. I have an old Surface Pro 4 laying around that, in a pinch, works perfectly fine with 11. Of course, it’s not fast. But it’s totally useable.
Her laptop just wasn't having it, windows 11, windows was using 3.7gb ram took about 30 seconds for task manager to open. As soon as I upgraded the ram is was usable.
I checked for any surprising background services or anti virus software and there was nothing really
That sounds more like issues Windows would have running on an HDD (or maybe eMMC) instead of an SSD… Bit that wouldn’t explain why it got better, when you upgraded the RAM…
It's not worth trying to understand windows ram usage, it will drive any same person insane. The laptop uses intel optane as it's main drive, which is slower than an SSD but much much lower latency so should actually be perfect for the job of being swap. But it shit the bed.
For apple, that difference is $200.. not negligible I'd say
Oh yea, absolutely. I meant that in regards to the price of memory itself, be it as modules for your desktop PC or the chips itself for soldered solutions. Apple’s markup is bonkers
That's because apple is a greedy grabby company who wants all your money. The easiest solution is to stop buying their products
I just slap in 32GB on every computer I build because the MoBos can take 128GB and anything less feels cheap and silly.
Hard disagree. The average computer user is idling at 5gb already because the average computer user is stupid.
Still leaves 3gb for the web browser and the average user isn’t using anything else anyways. And even on chrome that’s quite a few pages.
No they can’t. I ran 8gb of ram for years and it turns out that that’s why my computer sucked
Maybe you’re not an average user then. Most people just browse the web and maybe manage some photos or fill out a document once in a while. You could do that on 4GB if you wanted to, let alone 8.
I wouldn't say 4gb is usable for the average consumer. Using the assumption they're using windows 11 that'll eat 3.7 ish GB of ram just idling.
You forget there though, that a lot of the RAM, that Windows (and most modern operating systems) uses, while idling, is a cache of programs you’re likely to open and that gets cleared, if you open something else. That has been a thing since Vista and was btw one of the reasons why Vista was criticized for high memory useage. Windows 11 is very useable with 4GB of RAM, if you’re not planning to do something bigger than browsing the web or editing a word document.
I'm not forgetting that, but it won't just clear that ram it will want to put it into swap, and depending on your storage speed that can slow tasks down. Making it quite stuttery.
I mean, a (good) SSD is worth quite a lot, even on very old systems. I have an old 2008 MacBook laying around. It’s certainly not fast but with an SSD it’s totally useable, even on current macOS versions.
Oh for sure, I remember buying my first SSD and booting windows in under 10 seconds and being like whaaaat.
I am starting to think maybe I am a ram hog.
How? I have 108 tabs open and still use 2.67GB of RAM.
Tabs of what? Chromes ram usage is more of a meme than an actual ram issue, windows will only allow an application to use so much ram depending on ram availability
108 tabs in chromium. Mentioned RAM usage is total RAM usage including all system and kernel, but excluding page cache. Forgot to mention libreoffice in background.