Postby Demokritos » Wed Dec 06, 2006 0:13
Never heard of a computer called "T-Bird", but if it came with 256 MB RAM and there is a free RAM-slot next to the one in use, then I'm pretty sure you can stick an other 256 MB RAM-module there and thereby get a total of 512 MB RAM. But it's critical that you use the right kind of RAM-modules. If you get the wrong kind the computer won't recognize them and cannot use them. So, are you sure those new RAM-modules are of the same type as the old ones?
But generally, increasing the RAM does not automatically make everything faster. That depends on what kind of applications you're running. To make a SIMPLIFIED analogy, if I have understood it correctly myself: the computer is like a juggler - the size of the RAM dictates how many things it can juggle with at the same time (say five fruits), the speed of the processor dictates how fast it can juggle those things (say ten fruits per second), and the size of the harddisc dictates how many different things there can be to juggle with (say oranges, bananas and apples but no room for pears, pineapples etc). Different applications have different demands when it comes to RAM. Let's say that 256 MB RAM lets you keep five fruits in the air, but that you're only running pretty small and simple applications that require a two-fruits-in-the-air capacity. Doubling the RAM then won't do much good, since you're already work easily with what you got.
If your computer used to be faster than it is now there may be two other causes for it. First, over time, the files tends to get spread out over the harddisc in a way that slows the computer down. Solution: run a defragmentation programme (can take several hours on a big harddisc). Second, if you have many more programs running in the background in your computer now than you had at the beginning the new ones may require so much of the the computer's resources that there's considerably less power over for the other programs you're using. Solution: shut down all background programmes when they are not really needed. One example: Antivirus programmes can run in the background and reserve pretty much of the computer's processing power. Having such a programme on or off when playing a game, for instance, might make a notable difference for the performance of the game. Be careful when shutting down such background programmes, however, for many of them are very important. So, play it safe: if you cannot figure out if you need a particular programme that's running in the background, don't shut it down.
Another and more drastic way of freshening up things is to simply reinstall everything. Then the computer will be almost like new and therefore work almost like new. At least until you start loading it with all those extra programmes...
Last edited by
Demokritos on Thu Dec 07, 2006 15:43, edited 1 time in total.