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That wasn't the point. And you've introduced a completely new element to a point that's already been completely confused by people being obtuse.

This was not a conversation about introducing a large file into an already-open application.

The original point I made was that RAM in itself has nothing to do with how quickly a program or application will open. Whether 4GB or 8GB, the HDD or SSD dictates the speed at which a application will open.

And you missed the point we, as you call us, obtuse people were making, that if you have all of your memory loaded and try to open something the more memory you have helps as less swapping takes place.

Face the fact that we are both right. I never said you were wrong as the drive will make a great difference, but I was just pointing out that your statement had no exclusions and was simply stating that RAM never made a difference. It is not true for every case, and that was the point we were trying to make is that it does in certain cases and instances.

Why can't you accept the fact that there are cases where it makes a difference, rather than making assumptions about our usage abilities and knowledge. I personally have one program that loads so many plug-in during the starting that I noticed a great deal of difference when adding RAM, and this same effect happened whether using an installed SSD or HDD (increases were felt in both conditions). My entire company had to order more RAM for all of the machines recently to make productivity gains.
 
I was just pointing out that your statement had no exclusions and was simply stating that RAM never made a difference.

NutsNGum said:
"RAM has little or nothing to do with how quickly Photoshop or any other application opens."

Could you point me to where it says "never" please.

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Agreed. I am hoping to complete some real world benchmarks to show the exact differences between various configurations. I should have it ready this weekend

Sounds like a great idea Seb, and it would help settle this once and for all!
 
The only time a user will notice an appreciable difference is by moving from a spinning drive to a solid state.

When you use words like never, always, and only they are absolutes. So it wasn't never, but in this case takes the same meaning.

The argument wasn't whether SSD makes he only difference, just that more RAM makes a difference. The problem is, when we decide what is a real world scenario. I added more RAM to the wife's machine and even she noticed the difference (and she is not tech minded and didn't know I had done it). She just noticed things ran better, smoother, and faster. That is what I would call real world (and her usage is mainly internet and word processing).
 
i consider myself an average user, i use around 4GB RAM.. but i'm upgrading to 8 soon because i find it just a bit to small.
 
48GB RAM... Why? So you can boast? :confused:

No, because i need it. Why the insulting comment disguised as a question? :confused:

Why would one boast that they have a bigger hammer? Why would someone purchase a larger hammer than needed?

I have 24gb now on the my Mac Pro and have page outs upwards of 30% of page ins on a regular basis.
 
At this time in technology, for the average user, I have been recommending 4GB as the minimum amount of RAM to have. That way they'll have more than enough to do anything they want and not have spent too much on it.
 
And you missed the point we, as you call us, obtuse people were making, that if you have all of your memory loaded and try to open something the more memory you have helps as less swapping takes place.

...

I personally have one program that loads so many plug-in during the starting that I noticed a great deal of difference when adding RAM, and this same effect happened whether using an installed SSD or HDD (increases were felt in both conditions). My entire company had to order more RAM for all of the machines recently to make productivity gains.

I use a program that upon opening it, it instantly loads 1-2 GB into RAM. Its just somewhat meaningless to talk about a program only opening. Obviously you're opening it to actually DO something with some amount of data. This program does me no good as just some empty shell sitting there. But if that's all I wanted, sure, maybe 100 MB of RAM will squeeze in somewhere in no time...

Its pretty easy to test what's limiting you too. For example, when I load this program, I see my disk spin up and hit 200MB/sec for a few seconds as its loading plug ins, caching files and what not, all while RAM usage of this program goes 1.5 GB or so. So yeah, if my computer could hit 400 MB/sec off the HD, it would load faster. But if I don't have that 1+ GB of free space in the RAM, where is that data being read going to go? Its going to have to keep reading from disk every time it needs to access some system file while starting up, and then its going to bog down as it tries to load the projects, which does on start up.

So, yeah, this guy can take some consolation that he's right, you need to READ data first to open a program, but if your program tries to load something into memory upon start up (as all programs do), then you also need free RAM to start quickly.

If we're being obtuse, he's being ignorant. I'll take the former over the latter any day.
 
Have we defined: average user?

According to information from Census.gov, this is what an "average user" looks like..

home use:
Internet and Email: 89%
Word Processing: 55.8%
Games: 49%

Work Use:
Internet and Email: 75.4%
Word Processing: 67.8%
Spreadsheets: 64.4%


I don't think the "average user" has much use for CS 5.5, video editing, 48GB of RAM or much else this thread has (d)evolved into :)
 
According to information from Census.gov, this is what an "average user" looks like..
Census data isn't going to be very revealing, as it is based on asking a very limited number of questions, which don't include questions about CS5, computer gaming, multimedia apps, or other more resource-intensive applications. Besides, the "average" family has more important things to worry about, like taking care of their 2nd child, who isn't quite all there, since the average household size is 3.14! :eek:
 
The average user isn't considered tech savvy either, so this thread wouldn't be aimed at them. ;)
 
The average user isn't considered tech savvy either, so this thread wouldn't be aimed at them. ;)

That is exactly the point I was trying to make. Though the OP did ask about the "average user," you are not really going to find the "average user" on this forum much. Unless it is to ask questions like "OMG I want to buy an iPhone, which color is fastest!"

If we are talking about the "average" computer user, rather than the average user on this forum, I think you will find that the census data isn't far off. I am sure that most people who own a computer, use it primarily for email, web browsing and some basic games, and FB. We are talking the "average" computer user, not the average user on this forum
 
I just took posession on a new 13-inch MBP with teh standard 4GB. As soon as I can I plan to upgrade to 8GB. Why? Becusae it's so danged cheap now that it's dumb not to upgrade (equally dumb - actually dumber, to upgrade from Apple and pay their ridiculous RAM upgrade prices! ) I also have a 27" iMac which I upgraded to 12GB for about $50. If you can spare around $50-60, it's a no brainer to jump to 8GB. Then you KNOW you will have enough for a long long time!
 
if we were talking about an expensive upgrade..i would say no...live with it and let it depreciate and then go ahead and purchase...however ...in a day where 8gb of ram is only 50 dollars (i bought mine from owc) or cheaper..it just makes sense to keep your computer up to date

Ive found plenty of people that traded their laptops because they got tired of them being "slow" ...this laptops were never updated...If you keep it up to date it ll have a longer life spam
 
After a bit, I just did a full reinstall and supposed that I was done tinkering with Lion. The next day, I got 8GB of RAM, forked out a few bucks for the 1.35v low-volt version (you can find another thread about it), and now I'm happy with my workflow.

Funny how 8GB of RAM can solve most problems :D
 
The average user doesn't need anywhere near 4GB's, in an ideal world. The problem is that software developers and operating system vendors have ample resources to play with, gone are the days of spending weeks trying to optimise your software to make it work within the few kilobytes of RAM available.

But that's going off on a slight tangent. 4GB's is still ample memory, especially on OS X. If you're referring to literally an average user, Safari, Pages, iTunes, a gigabyte of memory would suffice (just), with 2GB being optimal.

I have just iTunes, Safari (with 12 tabs, some of which have mixed Flash contents), and Photoshop open, and already I'm down to 1.2GB free on 8GB of RAM.

Safari alone takes up 3.2GB (1.4GB for the main process, 1.0GB for the plugin process, 800MB for web content).

So yeah, I think... definitely more RAM helps. 4GB is just not adequate with the rate Lion and Safari are consuming RAM. Just with 1 or 2 tabs, Safari takes up 300MB or more...

The nature of *nix is that it will make use of all the RAM available to it, even if it doesn't need it. If you took out 4GB, I doubt you would see any change (unless of course you're doing anything particularly demanding in photoshop, but then I would argue any photoshop user cannot be classified as a bog standard average user).

I had a friend who ran a little linux server. He knew how to chuck bits and pieces together and run a few Linux commands to get a basic home built Linux web server running, but not much else. Anyway, he had phpsysinfo running which kept telling him the machine was using 99% of its memory. He chucked gigs and gigs into that machine before I told him what was happening.
 
4GB is ample for an 'average' user. I have 8GB but never seem to go anywhere near 50%, Lion & all

That being said, RAM is cheap, which is why I got 8GB in the first place ...
 
i have 1.75 free! with safari and iTunes and ichat open! thats all i really do on my macbook, so i think 4gb is good for now, but idk! i mean i wouldn't even know how to install more ram or where to get it!
 
at this moment my computer is showing 3.76gb free memory. so, i'd say that it was worthwhile. ;)

Why is free RAM a good thing? Free RAM is wasted RAM... theoretically, you'd want the exact amount of RAM that the computer needs at all times, no more, no less.

Or are you saying that, because you have slightly less than 4 GB free, then your computer obviously needs more than 4 GB? That would be a better point, although the OS will expand its memory usage based on available RAM, so you basically have half your RAM not being used, which is functionally equivalent to having 4 GB RAM installed.

That being said, RAM is dirt cheap so there's no real reason to have less than what you can afford (all things taken into consideration).
 
i have 1.75 free! with safari and iTunes and ichat open! thats all i really do on my macbook, so i think 4gb is good for now, but idk! i mean i wouldn't even know how to install more ram or where to get it!

crucial.com

incredibly easy to install.

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Why is free RAM a good thing? Free RAM is wasted RAM... theoretically, you'd want the exact amount of RAM that the computer needs at all times, no more, no less.

Or are you saying that, because you have slightly less than 4 GB free, then your computer obviously needs more than 4 GB? That would be a better point, although the OS will expand its memory usage based on available RAM, so you basically have half your RAM not being used.

come again?:D
 
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