Need more RAM on MBA

[beej210]

I know the RAM isn't upgradeable as it's directly on the motherboard, but is there a way to use an SD card like with Windows or something else while the computer is "docked" on my desk?

Don't care how big or clunky it is, just want more speed

 

[maflynn]

Nope, not to my knowledge. Unfortunately that is one of the limitations of the MBA

 

[TheRealDamager]

I know the RAM isn't upgradeable as it's directly on the motherboard, but is there a way to use an SD card like with Windows or something else while the computer is "docked" on my desk?

Don't care how big or clunky it is, just want more speed

Do you have 2GB or 4GB? Just wondering what you are using that is taxing the stock RAM.

 

[dlimes13]

I know the RAM isn't upgradeable as it's directly on the motherboard, but is there a way to use an SD card like with Windows or something else while the computer is "docked" on my desk?

Don't care how big or clunky it is, just want more speed

You can use an SD Card as storage but as RAM, you're SOL. SD Card read speeds are significantly slow compared to RAM.

 

[bogatyr]

With the built in SSD, RAM shouldn't be a big deal. Paging on an SSD is much faster than a HDD.

 

[beej210]

I've got 4gb, and I use "FreeMemory" to help free up RAM. I have Outlook, 2 excel sheets, Parallels (scaled down to 512mb), and Firefox open

 

[theSeb]

With the built in SSD, RAM shouldn't be a big deal. Paging on an SSD is much faster than a HDD.

Yes, but the SSD is still over 20 times slower than RAM.

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I've got 4gb, and I use "FreeMemory" to help free up RAM. I have Outlook, 2 excel sheets, Parallels (scaled down to 512mb), and Firefox open

Those apps usually slow down your system even more.

 

[bogatyr]

Yes, but the SSD is still over 20 times slower than RAM.

Of course it isn't as good as RAM, otherwise SSDs would replace RAM.

My point is that it isn't very noticeable when your system runs out of physical RAM when doing typical tasks. Aside from something like video editing/CAD work - running out of RAM doesn't have much of an impact on SSD systems. Even running a few VMs which fills up my RAM doesn't cause me any slowdown on my MBA.

 

[TheRealDamager]

I've got 4gb, and I use "FreeMemory" to help free up RAM. I have Outlook, 2 excel sheets, Parallels (scaled down to 512mb), and Firefox open

You should have no issues running that set of stuff in 4GB. No idea why you are having issues with that.

 

[smithrh]

I've had problems with Parallels eating RAM... mucking around with the RAM settings hasn't done a whole lot. It may be my usage within Parallels, not sure.

Since I have 8Gb RAM on one machine and 16 Gb on the other, it's not a huge concern for me so I've never gotten to the bottom of it.