will extre memory effect my battery life

[maddogeco]

Ive been thinking of upping my memory from 2gb to 4gb in my 2.33ghz macbook pro thats still running tiger. I do a lot of typing on it during the day in classes at uni on battery power. Then video fx and sound production on it at night with the power cable plugged it. The computer is nearly a year old.
Will my battery life be effected by the memory boost - meaning, will the extra RAM draw more current?
Ive heard that it may actually draw less because less virtual memory will be used.
what about if i upgrade to leopard when 10.5.3 comes out??

any help would be tops cheer all

 

[Vegabondsx]

It shouldn't affect your battery life. Like you said, if anything, it could improve it because less virtual memory is being used. This is especially true if you have a lot of applications open or are using a memory-intensive application.

 

[philgilder]

It shouldn't affect your battery life. Like you said, if anything, it could improve it because less virtual memory is being used. This is especially true if you have a lot of applications open or are using a memory-intensive application.

correct, more ram means better battery life as the hdd is accessed less...

 

[m85476585]

With 2gb, you shouldn't be using very much virtual memory anyways for the kinds of things you do on battery power, so adding more memory probably won't give you a battery life benefit. That said, memory uses very little power (it doesn't need a heatsink or anything), so I don't think it will noticeably reduce your battery life. I'd go for it since memory is so cheap right now, and because it will most likely help performance when you are doing anything memory-intensive.

 

[Hawkeye411]

Might increase battery life if you are running lots of apps at the same time; less use of virtual memory.

 

[maddogeco]

the out come

i just put the extra ram in this morning and it doesn't look like there's any difference in the battery life but the boot time is down to about 30 seconds from about 50.