I'm in the process of getting more Ram.
Excellent. Glad to hear it.
Was gonna go for 4 gigs but the
specs save 2 max so guess I'll go for 2.
Three points:
1. Do not assume that more RAM is always better than less. How much
RAM you need for good performance is *not* a one-size-fits-all
situation. You get good performance if the amount of RAM you have
keeps you from using the page file, and that depends on what apps you
run. Most people running a typical range of business applications
under Vista find that 2GB works well, others need 512MB. Almost anyone
will see poor performance with less. Some people, particularly those
doing things like editing large photographic images, can see a
performance boost by adding even more--sometimes much more.
If you are currently using the page file significantly, more memory
will decrease or eliminate that usage, and improve your performance.
If you are not using the page file significantly, more memory will do
nothing for you.
2. Assuming that your version of Vista is 32-bit, note that all 32-bit
client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) have a 4GB address
space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.
But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.
Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no
address space to map it too.
3. If your motherboard won't support more than 2GB, consider all the
above to be just background info. Go ahead and upgrade to 2GB.