snall ups

[daveo]

calling computer gurus
I have a problem
some time ago the scrotes nicked my computer tower, since then I've been using a laptop (HP)
its been ok but when I have been using gimp and inkscape for a while it starts to play up and often have to reboot to clear the memory. now the question is is this just  a memory shortage problem
(only 1GB currently installed) or will it be also the processor speed currently running a 1.73Gb
I don't want to go out and buy an update for the ram if it's both?
Dave

[dirtrider73068]

I would think more ram would help some, what are you running xp, 7 vista? if vista or 7 its best to run it on at least 4g of memory, xp should do ok with 1 but need to bump it up to 2 or 3 if the mother board will take it.

[EIEIO]

GIMP and Inkscape suck up a ton of memory. I would say that 1GB is for sure an issue - you'll be paging RAM to disk which slows you to a crawl. 1.73GHz should be plenty fast - is it a dual core processor?

RAM is pretty cheap now. I'd add as much as the laptop will allow. You can google for laptop memory and enter your model number to see how high you can go.

The going rate today is $80 for 8 GByte - $10/GByte. Back in the Apple II days (1977 or so) we paid $300 for 16 kByte banks of memory - almost $20 Million/GByte. Reduced 2 million times.

The 1st hard drive we bought for an Apple II was from Corvus, around 1979. 5 megabyte drive cost $5000. That's $1Million/GByte. Today a 1 TByte laptop hard drive sells for $120. That's $0.12/GByte. Reduced 8 million times.

The good old days? 

[daveo]

Thanks Guys
I have just popped in another 2gb chip and its flying, think I will upgrade the other chip now, but thats the max the motherboard will take so it will have to do till I get a new tower.
Dave

[EIEIO]

I run on a 4GB limit and it seems to work OK, but I'd put in more if my laptop would take it.