Advice on ram or ssd please!

[blb20]

I own a late 2011 macbook pro with a 500GB HHD, 4GB ram and a 2.4 ghz i5. I don't know much about computers really but I know that my mac is performing much too slowly for what I do. I really just browse the internet a lot, use iTunes and Spotify and that's about it and it seems as if it's constantly freezing and stuttering. I can't decide if I should upgrade my ram or upgrade to a SSD so any help would be greatly appreciated.

In Activity Monitor my usage is as follows -
Memory:
Physical Memory: 4.00 GB
Memory Used: 3.92 GB
Virtual Memory: 7.55 GB
Swap Used: 60.0 MB
CPU:
System: 2.58%
User: 3.36%
Idle: 94.47%
Disk:
Reads in: 2,152,722
Writes out: 1,125,391

If you need any more info then I'll provide! So what do y'all think I should do? Thanks for looking!

 

[Intell]

Based on the low swap amount, I'd suggest a SSD.

 

[wlossw]

First upgrade unless you are editing photos or video: ssd.

 

[blb20]

Sounds like an SSD it is then! But one question, even though it's showing 3.92 GB of memory used out of 4 GB a SSD would be the first choice?

 

[poiihy]

Sounds like an SSD it is then! But one question, even though it's showing 3.92 GB of memory used out of 4 GB a SSD would be the first choice?

Mavericks always leaves a little bit of memory free. It also tends to use up all memory for performance and efficiency.

 

[Intell]

No, a portion of the memory is inactive and will become free and available when the system needs it. Remember, on UNIX based operating systems like Mac OS X, free memory is wasted memory.

 

[poiihy]

No, a portion of the memory is inactive and will become free and available when the system needs it. Remember, on UNIX based operating systems like Mac OS X, free memory is wasted memory.

Oh right; it leaves memory allocated to applications and de-allocates it when others need it.

 

[blb20]

Ok I think I understand...lol Thank y'all!