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Do I need more RAM?

P

pcgeek12345

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 9, 2011
152
20
New Jersey
I use my Macbook every day for school and website work using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, Photoshop CS4, and Bridge CS4 on a daily basis. I have noticed that Lion is a RAM hog, as well as Safari. I would think that 4 GB would be more than sufficient. In the screenshot below, I have Safari, iTunes, and my connection manager for my air card open and I have 13 MB of ram free. I am getting beachballs constantly. Coming from a PC, I know how a system acts when it needs more RAM, but I’ve not really experienced a lot of slowdown.

This is my first Mac, so let me know if I am doing something wrong, or have any tips for improving the memory usage of Lion.

So, do I need to add more RAM?

Thanks.
 
I can't see the screenshot, but it's normal for a Mac to have almost no "free" ram because most of it is used as "inactive" ram, which is things like caches of recently closed programs to make them start faster next time you open them. Inactive RAM is supposed to be freed up when a program needs more RAM, but it doesn't always work as intended.

Look at Page Outs and Swap Used. If either regularly gets to more than a few hundred MB, you need more RAM. It sounds like you use a lot of RAM-heavy programs, so I wouldn't be surprised if you need more than 4GB. Now's a good time to upgrade because RAM has become incredibly cheap. 8GB should cost around $40.
 
pcgeek12345 said:
I use my Macbook every day for school and website work using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, Photoshop CS4, and Bridge CS4 on a daily basis. I have noticed that Lion is a RAM hog, as well as Safari. I would think that 4 GB would be more than sufficient. In the screenshot below, I have Safari, iTunes, and my connection manager for my air card open and I have 13 MB of ram free. I am getting beachballs constantly. Coming from a PC, I know how a system acts when it needs more RAM, but I’ve not really experienced a lot of slowdown.

This is my first Mac, so let me know if I am doing something wrong, or have any tips for improving the memory usage of Lion.

So, do I need to add more RAM?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

If you only have 13MB free then I would say Yes, you need more RAM, but we really need a little more info.
 
You can "get by" on 4GB but if you are down to 13 MB free RAM then you definitely need more ram. That is horrible. I don't like being under 1GB of RAM. I had page outs at 4GB and all I was doing was running things like Coda, Netbeans, and Browsing.

8GB of RAM is cheap, super easy to install, and improves performance all around. There is really no reason not to upgrade right now. You will love the performance boost from it but be prepared to rage at the tiny screws.
 
It's worth it!

Trust me, getting 8GB is worth it. My MacBook Pro has 8GB and it's been quite an improvement over 4GB. Adobe apps will run much better, and it's great to be able to use more than 4GB at once.

What model is your MacBook? Its definitely worth buying 8GB when it's pretty cheap right now.
 
pcgeek12345 said:
I use my Macbook every day for school and website work using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, Photoshop CS4, and Bridge CS4 on a daily basis. I have noticed that Lion is a RAM hog, as well as Safari. I would think that 4 GB would be more than sufficient. In the screenshot below, I have Safari, iTunes, and my connection manager for my air card open and I have 13 MB of ram free. I am getting beachballs constantly. Coming from a PC, I know how a system acts when it needs more RAM, but I’ve not really experienced a lot of slowdown.

This is my first Mac, so let me know if I am doing something wrong, or have any tips for improving the memory usage of Lion.

So, do I need to add more RAM?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

4GB is more than sufficient... if you don't run anything made by Adobe.

But if you do, regardless if it's Mac or PC, you need as much RAM as you can afford. Seriously. In some cases, even 16GB is not enough for Photoshop.
 
pcgeek12345 said:
I use my Macbook every day for school and website work using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, Photoshop CS4, and Bridge CS4 on a daily basis. I have noticed that Lion is a RAM hog, as well as Safari. I would think that 4 GB would be more than sufficient. In the screenshot below, I have Safari, iTunes, and my connection manager for my air card open and I have 13 MB of ram free. I am getting beachballs constantly. Coming from a PC, I know how a system acts when it needs more RAM, but I’ve not really experienced a lot of slowdown.

This is my first Mac, so let me know if I am doing something wrong, or have any tips for improving the memory usage of Lion.

So, do I need to add more RAM?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
If prices are reasonable, then get the RAM. A pair of 4 GB should not cost more than 40 bucks nowadays.
 
Just wait for a sale on newegg or amazon.com. recently I bought an 8GB kit for $29.99 plus it came with a free 4GB SD card.
I'm not an early adapter of large capacity ram, but I usually buy it when a large capacity sells for under $50. In this case it's a very easy decision considering just how cheap DDR3 is now.
 
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