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Will increase memory size help battery life?
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 4:34 pm
by Sirnice
I was just wondering if I increase the memory on my T42 from 512MB to 2GB will help with battery life. I figured if more memory is added then the computer will not access the hard drive as often and therefore use less battery. Does it make sense or just wishful thinking?
Re: Will increase memory size help battery life?
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 4:40 pm
by ohman
Sirnice wrote:I was just wondering if I increase the memory on my T42 from 512MB to 2GB will help with battery life. I figured if more memory is added then the computer will not access the hard drive as often and therefore use less battery. Does it make sense or just wishful thinking?
With windows the memory management is bad at best, and horrible at worst compared to other operating systems. The best possible scenario would be to remove the windows page file (which windows can complain about sometimes), or to create a ramdisk and put it on there. Windows has really quirky behavior with more than 1 GB in there.
Another thing is that the RAM will require a steady amount of current to keep the information in memory, so its a trade-off.
Re: Will increase memory size help battery life?
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 4:47 pm
by beerak
Sirnice wrote:I was just wondering if I increase the memory on my T42 from 512MB to 2GB will help with battery life. I figured if more memory is added then the computer will not access the hard drive as often and therefore use less battery. Does it make sense or just wishful thinking?
Theoretically yes, but Windows always swaps but not so often. But take care 2Gigs spent a couple of power too.
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 5:29 pm
by dash7540
Economically speaking, it would be cheaper to just buy a high-capacity battery than to upgrade to 2GB RAM.
Newegg has the 9-cell for $99.
For the price of 2GB RAM, you could probably buy at least 3 of those batteries
; that would give you 15-18 hours of juice!
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 5:33 pm
by daeojkim
dash7540 wrote:Economically speaking, it would be cheaper to just buy a high-capacity battery than to upgrade to 2GB RAM.
Newegg has the 9-cell for $99.
For the price of 2GB RAM, you could probably buy at least 3 of those batteries
; that would give you 15-18 hours of juice!
I agree...
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 5:34 pm
by beerak
That's true but if he works e.g. with Java or CAD then the HDD is in the service all the time. 1GB+extended battery as dash7540 mentioned should be better solution for similar price
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 6:31 pm
by Sirnice
thank you for your thoughts. I think I'm going to add another 512mb making it 1GB and upgrade the to the extended battery. upgrading both would probably better than just adding memory.
Thanks