<p>What does this mean? Does this mean “How many things you can play with at the same time” doesn’t it?</p>
<p>So, I would like to have word document, internet, IM, and a movie open and playing at the same time. So should I get 1 GB or 2 GB?</p>
<p>Also… 80 GB, 120 GB, 160 GB… Which should I choose? I plan to save documents and stuff. I plan to have all those fun little programs, ya know. Firefox, Songbird, IM things, Adware, Limewire, etc. I plan on saving a lot of music on there so I can listen to it and stuff. And I might save a movie or two, but that’s unlikely. If I do, I would delete it. So what do you say?</p>
<p>For your uses. 1 GB will be fine. You won’t need 2 GB unless you are playing games or running hefty apps like adobe premiere. This refers to RAM, or Random Access Memory. You are right, it pretty much determines how much stuff you can have running at the same time. Information and processes from your programs are stored in your RAM. </p>
<p>On second thought, it depends. Vista’s system requirements are extremely high. I believe Microsoft recommends 4 GB for full optimization of the operating system. I tried Vista on my laptop, and I have around 1GB, and it ran alright. So if you have vista, dont have TOO many programs running at once. </p>
<p>For your harddrive(80GB,120GB,160GB), it is entirely up to the user to decide how large it has to be. Normally, 80GB is fine, but it depends on how much media you are going to store on your computer. I see that you want to use limewire. If you are one of those people who have a humongous music collection, you might want a bigger hard drive.</p>
<p>You’re better off going with more RAM than going with a bigger hard drive is what I’ve been told. I see no problem upgrading to the 2GB provided you can afford it.</p>
<p>I’ve got 1GB with my Windows Vista laptop. The only problem I’ve encountered has been playing Age of Empires so I have quit playing that game, but otherwise no big deal. I can run several programs without noticeble problems outside that game.</p>
<p>I’d recommend 2 GB if you can afford it easily. Vista’s quite greedy.
80-120 GB should be fine. What you could consider is to also buy a large external hard drive (SATA or so on…) of about 120/160 GB to cover things in case you have a large music collection.</p>
<p>I would definitely recommend 2 GB, sometimes when running a movie off the internet, (not DVD) your computer will crash and it really sucks. PLus then you will have no problems if you ever start playing any games.</p>
<p>You’re best off with the most RAM you can afford and the least space possible.</p>
<p>Often, buy the most RAM you can get on one DIMM and check the price for an upgrade. It’s cheaper to buy ram yourself and undo literally 1 screw many times than to do a factory upgrade.</p>
<p>If you’re using a laptop, get hte smallest harddrive possible. Hard drives in laptops have very high failure rates, are slightly more expensive per gigabyte due to form factor, and are not necessarily that fast. Your best bet is as small a hard drive as possible and then buy a ton of space on an external drive. It’s cheap, the files can be moved around, it can be used to backup what’s on your laptop harddrive, and for documents, music, pictures, and video you won’t notice a speed difference when accessing the external.</p>
<p>RAM: it is important to have 2 gig of ram to run vista smoothly. Aero takes up tons of ram, and the minimum requirement is 512. They actually say that 512 is enough to run the system, with no applications running. 1 gig will get you by, but you won’t be able to load programs quickly (word takes about 30 seconds) or anything, or run more than 2 or 3 and keep the computer working at full speed.</p>
<p>WIth 2 gigs, you use about 15 - 20% of the system memory to run Vista with 80% left over for gaming, aim triton (takes up loads of ram), firefox, movies, music, everything at once pretty much. so i recommend the upgrade, 2 dimms of 1 gig ram don’t usually cost more than 125 bucks so it’s good to get. make sure you get at least 667mhz ddr2 ram. 800 mhz is coming out this fall.</p>
<p>With teh harddrive: Don’t bother getting more than 120gb harddrive MAX. You won’t need it. If you are archiving, I doubt you wil need to regularly access your files that you store, so buy an external harddrive that won’t cost more than 100-120 dollars at the MOST, and with that you can get a seagate 250 or 300 gb external harddrive that is 1) reliable 2) cheap 3) HUGE 4) not heavy to weigh down your laptop.</p>
<p>Check with your supplier on how the RAM is configured: while you may think you can upgrade easily later, it may be that you are limited by the slots and type of RAM configurations. For instance: if you buy 1 gb RAM, it may be configured on 2 each 512 gb DIMMs; so in order to add 1 gb RAM, you actually have to buy 2 ea new for each slot. If you will ever upgrade, it is cheaper to do it at initial buy. (ex: buy upgrade from 1 gb RAM to 2 gb RAM = $60 at time of initial purchase; buy upgrade from 1 gb (factory) to 2 gb (self-install) later = $120)</p>
<p>you’d be surprised with college students - considering 1 album can take up ~100 MB (in good quality MP3s) and leaving 20GB for programs and other files (not to mention the system itself), that’s about 600 music albums. add in bigger files, like videos… 5 GB high-definition surround sound soccer matches (<em>grin</em>)…</p>
<p>in other words I’ve just about filled up my 40 GB hard drive + 120 GB external hard drive…</p>
<p>Running anything less than 2GB on Vista is suicide; unless you’re a heavy downloader, 80GB should be alright. I personally have filled up an 80GB, a 40GB external and a 250GB external.</p>
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<p>There is software for this. I suggest you look around for hard drive/file encryption software. This should help:</p>
<p>Get as much as you can afford. Software designers will continue to write programs that use hardware to its fullest. 2GHz processor may seem a bit much today, but two years from now we’ll be laughing at it.</p>