12" 1.33GHz ibook - 1 GB ram or 1.5GB?

[Megatron]

Honest opinions here please - i'm a normal user - don't really use my ibook for any professional apps, mainly office, internet, im, music, dvds sometimes. I do, however appreciate the speed increases associated with more ram.

My question is what kind of difference will I notice between the 512 mb upgrade and the 1gb upgrade? Will I notice much difference? Is the 1GB worth the more than double cost of the 512 upgrade?

I'm a student on a tight budget.

Opinions, please.

 

[CanadaRAM]

If you can afford the 1 Gb , go for that, because with one socket, you have only one shot at upgrading (unless you want to remove the 512 later and dispose of it)

Your primary difference between 1 Gb and 1,5 Gb RAM total, will be when you want to run multiple programs at once -- word processing while you are surfing while you are checking email and playng some iTunes in the background. 1 Gb is enough for individucal programs or smaller numbers of programs at one time.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

 

[Ashapalan]

I am a student also and have been using a rev D 12" powerbook at 512 ram since april.

I still am so can't tell you about performance, but my main view is that you do only have one chance to upgrade. If you go to one gig, you couldnt go higher in the future without wasting money because you'd have to remove the 512, so probably best off getting the gig now for piece of mind.

 

[kwajaln]

I have a 12-inch iBook 1.2 gHz with 512MB of RAM. For your usage, I would think that 1GB would be more than enough and 1.5 might be a bit of overkill. I say again, for the uses you mentioned above, before anyone bashes me for using "overkill" in the same sentence as buying more RAM.

 

[WillMak]

I have a 12 inch 1.33 ibook with 1.5 ram. For the most part my ibook only uses around 800-900 ram. Only on rare occasions does it go past the 1 gig mark of usage.

 

[Megatron]

I have a 12 inch 1.33 ibook with 1.5 ram. For the most part my ibook only uses around 800-900 ram. Only on rare occasions does it go past the 1 gig mark of usage.

That's interesting - what programs do you usually have running? How many are open at the same time?

Thanks for the all the responses guys. On my computer at work it has 1 gig of ram (a pc) and it's nice because after the very first time loading a program such as Word, it takes a little while (reads from hard disk) but after that, quitting and relaunching is instantaneous.

I'm thinking 1 gig is probably adequate, but I do appreciate the logic of upgrading the full amount so as not to waste money later. On the other hand, this is an ibook, and that money could be put toward a future computer that is more powerful all around. Decisions, decisions.

 

[WillMak]

That's interesting - what programs do you usually have running? How many are open at the same time?

I normally have Azureus bit torrent, Word, Itunes, quicktime, preview, mozilla, dashboard with 12 widgets, VLC video player, activity monitor, aol instant messenger, icalender, and excel open and running.

 

[kretzy]

I just do basic stuff as well and i've found that 1GB is plenty for what I do. If you're not going to be doing anything heavy, just get the 512 and save the rest of the money for something else (I know the feeling of being a povo student )

 

[Megatron]

Thanks for the responses - that's what I suspected, that 1 GB would be fine for the programs I run. Can anyone else with 1 GB chime in? Is it working ok for you? Do you wish you had gotten the 1GB upgrade instead of just the 512?