Maxing out the RAM on T42p

[cynic]

I did - seems fine when I do it on a machine with enough RAM.

How much is enough?

[awolfe63]

I did - seems fine when I do it on a machine with enough RAM.

How much is enough?

Depends what you try to run

In my case - with 512MB - I could run streaming video with Windows Media Player and run Microsoft Word at the same time. With 2GB - I assume you could do more.

My point is - that I don't think the swap file comes into play until you start to run out of standard RAM - so reducing your available RAM to create a RAMDISK makes little sense for performance.

[JeffNT326]

The whole point of having a RAMDISK is for the notebook to NEVER have to access the hd due to swapping. This method would increase battery life as the hd doesn't have to be accessed as much.

Also, you can set the ramdisk to be your temp and internet cache folder as well.

[awolfe63]

The whole point of having a RAMDISK is for the notebook to NEVER have to access the hd due to swapping. This method would increase battery life as the hd doesn't have to be accessed as much.

Also, you can set the ramdisk to be your temp and internet cache folder as well.

It could help to set your ramdisk to be your temp and internet cache folder - although you would lose everything on a reboot.

In may cases though - it will not. Windows uses excess RAM for a disk cache anyway and you should not be accessing the hard disk due to swapping until you run out of system RAM. Taking away system RAM just encourages swapping and swapping to ramdisk uses more power than using regular system memory.

Also - more DRAM sucks up power - even when it is not being used.

In general, having more RAM than you need wastes power. The problem is that having less ram than you need wastes a *LOT* of power and most of us don't know just how much we need - so it is better to err on the high side.

[Skywing]

my minimum is 1GB, after getting 1GB in my desktop, i dunno how i lived without it, i ordered my TP w/ 512. ill up it to 1GB myself for $100