how to tell if ram will last for the longhaul?

[orijinal]

i just got my 1gig stick of kingmax ram from newegg today.

prior to this day i read about 'kernel panics' and apps crashing with this ram.
others have said it has worked flawlessly.

so far everything seems good, in my about mac it says there is 1.25 ram installed.

i dont know what a 'kernel panic' is so i can't say if i've had one yet. and i haven't encountered any programs crashing on me yet.

is there anything i can do to test if this is going to work for me in the future? perhaps a way to see my memory usage, like with PC's i could just alt+control+delete to see the memory distribution. i'm a switcher so i'm not familiar with a similar ability with the mac.

 

[superbovine]

nope, just wait till have a panic. you can't test for symptons of bad ram unless it is bad and not functioning.

 

[orijinal]

what would be characteristic of a 'panic?'

i'm not the most hardware savvy guy

 

[superbovine]

lots of thing can cause a panic. i wouldn't worry about.

 

[orijinal]

yeah, but what happens during a panic is what i am asking.....

 

[superbovine]

yeah, but what happens during a panic is what i am asking.....

http://www.macmaps.com/kernelpanic.html

 

[solvs]

If you get a KP, you'll know it. Do a search and you'll find plenty of threads about it. Same with RAM tests. I think there might be some on VersionTracker. If it's working now and you aren't having issues, I wouldn't worry about it. As long as you leave it in there, you should continue to be fine. RAM doesn't usually go bad for no reason.

 

[CanadaRAM]

If you want to reassure yourself, find Rember or Memtest on Versiontracker.com, download and use them to test your memory. You can also use the Apple Hardware Test CD and TechTool Pro if you have it. FinalCut Pro also exercises RAM extremely, and will crash if the RAM is flakey.