Computer Memory: Do You Have What’s Needed For School?

(NAPSI)-Any time during the school year can be the right time for a high school or college student to take a closer look at the computer he or she is using to see if it has enough memory.

Many students find that investing in a memory upgrade for their computer can pay dividends when it comes to speed of operation and their computer's ability to run programs that demand a lot of memory.

For starters, if the computer has slowed down and is sluggish when it performs everyday tasks, such as viewing digital photos, watching videos, working on a presentation or term paper, or even taking online classes, it may be time to consider a memory upgrade.

In addition, it's common for engineering and finance students to run CAD and modeling programs. These are data-intensive programs that may require additional memory to run efficiently. The same may be true for arts and design majors who run Photoshop, music majors who use composition software, and geology majors who run advanced mapping software. Typically, programs such as these can benefit from having additional memory.

Also, if it seems to take forever for the computer to restart and response time slows down when more than one program or window is open at the same time, it's likely that it can use more memory.

While many find that improving the memory on a computer can be a fairly simple operation, it's still not without its challenges. To help, here are some tips.

Is It All About The RAM?

RAM-which stands for Random Access Memory-is the internal memory specifically used by the computer to run programs. If you are reading your e-mail, watching a video, writing a report or playing a game, your computer is loading those programs into RAM to run them. These types of computing activities can benefit most directly from a memory upgrade, by providing more space to run additional programs.

Is There Enough Memory?

Increasingly, many colleges and high schools have specific requirements concerning the kind of computer they expect a student to use. Often, this includes how powerful the computer is expected to be and how much memory it needs to have at its disposal.

Can I Do It Myself?

Fortunately, installing the memory can be a fairly straightforward activity. However, the process of finding the correct type of memory upgrade for your computer can sometimes be a real challenge for the average computer owner.

The good news is that there is an online retailer called Crucial.com that specializes in memory and storage. It also offers free, easy-to-use online tools designed to help consumers quickly find the memory upgrade best suited to restoring a computer's lost performance.

Simply use the drop-down menu on the Crucial Memory Advisor tool to see the types of memory supported by your computer and recommended memory upgrade options.

For those unsure of the computer's make and model, there is a System Scanner tool that automatically scans the computer's system and recommends compatible upgrades for its system.

Hundreds of thousands of types of computer memory upgrades for PCs and Mac computers, both new and old, are available through the Crucial.com website. To find your memory upgrade options, visit www.crucial.com.

If you find that your computer is sluggish when you are watching a video or writing a term paper, it may be time for a memory upgrade.

More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

Custom Search

More Hardware Information:

How to Build a PC

Do you know what could beat the exciting feeling of having a new computer? Make your own PC!

Guide to Buying Hard Drives

Apart from being one of the most essential parts of your computer, hard drive storage is constantly updating, in terms of both capacity of disk space and in physical size. When it comes time to upgrade your disk storage, there are a number of factors for you to take into account. Once you've made basic decisions about size, connectivity, speed and data transfer rate, and whether you want an internal drive or external, you can search through Myshopping.com.au to find the most suitable brand, and model, and compare the prices of different vendors.

Guide to Buying a Webcam

Webcams are those handy little cameras that attach to your PC and send images to a web page that can be viewed by others. This enables you to share daily life events with friends and family in other parts of the country or the world, or to arrange a video-conference with colleagues and maintain long distance relationships of all kinds. Of course the number of ways to use this technology is limited only by your imagination.

Buying Guide to Graphics Cards

The graphics card is a vital performance component of your computer, particularly if you play 3D games, or work with graphics and video content. The graphics card sits in an expansion card slot in your PC and it is specifically designed to process image data and output it to your monitor, enabling you to see it. A graphics card works by calculating how images appear, particularly 3D images, and renders them to the screen. 3D images and video images take a lot of processing capacity, and many graphics processors are complex, require fans to cool them and need direct power supply.

Notebook or Desktop Computer, What is the Best Buy?

The idea of purchasing a personal computer may be appealing to a lot of people, however they may feel undecided as weather to go for a traditional desktop computer or for a light weight portable notebook. Several aspects should be taken into consideration as for the purposes of such acquisition. If the main purpose of buying a computer is for occasional use, regardless if it is for work or entertainment activities, one may consider buying a traditional desktop computer taking in consideration that its price is usually lower than the portable version.

A Purchase Guide to Budget Notebooks

Since it became commercially available back in the early eighties, notebooks called the attention of computer users because of its small size and portability. Not much of a commercial success back then, it only took a short time before the computer industry improved this item, up to a point that is now considered to be one of the best selling computer consumer products

Is Notebook A Better Choice Than Desktop?

If internet made the world a global village, then we might as well say that notebooks made it a global colony. With desktops, things were a click away from us; notebook shorted the distance. Now we can carry the global colony on our shoulder. High-end technology at your lap, perhaps, we need nothing to conquer the world of convergence.

How To Select The Notebook That Meets Your Requirements

For the past ten years there has been a tremendous growth in the usage of notebook or laptop computers. The impact is that the notebooks are slowly replacing the traditional desktop computers from home as well as from office.

Buying The Right Notebook Computer

The single most important reason anyone buys a notebook is for portability. This is something that you can take anywhere. If you frequently travel in your work, you need a notebook. If you are a student going back and forth to the university, you need a notebook. If you are journalist traveling the world and submitting articles, you need a notebook. And today's notebooks can be as powerful as most desktops with dual processors, large capacity internal drives, and other attractive features. But which one is right for you? How do you determine what type of notebook will fit your current needs plus allow you to expand for the future?

Computers: An Afterschool Necessity for Many Young Students

Shopping for school supplies isn't what it used to be. Sure, kids still need notebooks, binders and pens -- but they won't survive without the latest technology either, namely a computer.