A New Computer for $30

What if I told you there is a specific piece of hardware to slow down the average computer user more than every other component combined?

What if I then told you that this important piece of hardware is also the cheapest and easiest to upgrade?

This mystery piece of computer hardware is called RAM, or random access memory. It comes in “sticks” of a few different sizes, but is not quite the same as a thumb drive.

Now, to get things straight, memory is NOT the same as storage. Memory goes inside your computer and is required for things to work. Thumb drives, flash drives, or data sticks, ( i.e. “storage”) are plugged into the outside of your computer and you put pictures or papers on them.

My favorite analogy for a computer is a chef in a restaurant. You, the customer, ask for something delicious like… listening to the "Tron Soundtrack." Before anything can happen, the chef will need ingredients. He goes to the shelves and grabs his ingredients. In this case, the ingredients would include the song file itself, the files needed to use iTunes, and probably some audio decoders and such. The shelves are your computer’s hard drive, and the files are “in storage.”

With ingredients in hand, the chef goes back to his table to work. This table is your RAM. It’s where the magic happens. He prepares your food. In less than a second (hopefully), your song begins to play.

As long as the song is playing or paused, it stays on the chef’s table. This makes it so that whenever YOU want to enjoy it, Brian won’t have to go through all the work of finding ingredients and putting them together again.

On your computer, we can call this “in memory.” For the most part, programs and files on your computer are in storage (the ingredient shelves) until you need them when they are put together and moved to your RAM (the chef table). Nifty right? This basic storage/memory relationship exists on any modern computer, as well as your phone, mp3 player, Wii, tablet computer and such.

If you are using a program, it’s safe to say that it is being temporarily stored in your RAM. This is true of anything from your computer clock and the little icons on your desktop to Diablo III and that raw video you are editing.

The trouble is that sometimes your “table” isn’t big enough to hold all of the stuff you do at once. When this happens, the chef will start putting food back on the storage shelves to free up space on the table. Then, when you need the food that was put away, he has to go all the way back to the shelves and find it again. On a computer, this is called a “major page fault.” Hard drives access data much more slowly than RAM, so having to walk over to the “shelves” and pick out stuff again slows you down significantly.

How do you know if this happening to you? Well, usually your computer tells you. If your computer is complaining about “virtual memory”, “out of memory”, or “expanding page file”, chances are good that insufficient RAM is behind it. Also, if your computer always gets noticeably slower when you have tons of programs running, then you might want to consider an upgrade.

Computer companies don’t want you to upgrade; they want you to buy a new machine. Luckily for us, upgrading RAM (assuming that you purchased the right sticks) takes approximately two minutes. First we have to find the right memory though. I recommend you download a program called Speccy (or use System Profiler in Mac). Both programs provide a neat report of the “stuff” you have inside your machine.

Launch Speccy and wait for it to load. It should display how much memory you have. I would suggest you upgrade if you see “256 MB”, “512 MB”, or “1.0GB.” If that’s what you see, click the “RAM” button. We are only really interested in the top section, titled “Memory slots.” Check to see if you have free memory slots.

If you have free slots:
Scroll down to the blue header titled “SPD” and click the blue arrow to expand. Adding memory to what you already have is cheaper, but you have to make sure that the memory you add is IDENTICAL to the memory you already have. For example, another memory stick in my laptop would have to be (type) DDR2 (size) 2048MB (manufacturer) Samsung and (Max Bandwidth) PC2-5300. Leave Speccy open and browse to your favorite computer component buying site (I personally love newegg.com).

If you do not have free slots:
The “free slots gang” has a cheaper solution than us, but our job is easier. Go to your favorite computer component buying site (I use newegg.com) and buy memory that is larger than what you have as well as being the same type (usually DDR2, possibly DDR3). You are replacing the memory, so you won’t have to match sticks.

While doing the actual installation is a breeze, subtle differences between computers makes writing detailed instructions difficult for me. I recommend you Google the model of your computer followed by “memory upgrade” to find instructions specific to you. Assuming you have a laptop, find the appropriate compartment and open it (only one screw for me) to gain access to your memory. Once you’re there all you have to do is slide the stick in until the lock clicks. The stick will only fit in one way.

Final thoughts: When working inside computers, always turn off and unplug everything. Your computer could shock you. Comically, you can also shock your computer and fry internal components! Avoid wearing synthetic clothes or working on rugs. Touch a metal surface before you begin to discharge static. Make sure your hands are clean.

Intimidated yet? I have never met anyone in Alfred that I didn’t think could pull this off in ten minutes (excluding shipping). If you are considering buying a new machine or are sick of only running one program at a time, this could be the best $10-30 you ever spent.