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At 06:56 PM 9/2/96 -0500, Jason Savage wrote:
> My machine is an IBM ThinkPad 701C. It is the DX4/75 version
>with 8MB (soon to be 16MB) of RAM and a 720MB of hard disk space. To
By the way, I just read in a Norton FAQ from Symantec that Win 95
uses a full 14 MB (RAM or RAM/Swapfile Combo) just to load the basics, not
counting anything else (extra Win 95 modules, utilities, other software, etc.).
Anyone planning on upgrading to "only" 16 MB RAM should perhaps keep
this in mind before doing so.
Personally, I've noticed that my "Win 95 basics"--which include
Networking capability and some Norton stuff loaded (i.e. Norton Taskbar,
etc.) takes up quite a bit more RAM than 14 MB before I even load up
anything I actually do work in (i.e. Word or Excel). My Desktop, with 48 MB
RAM and more "basic" utils (Norton stuff) than I choose to load on my
Notebook for memory reasons, says that 67% of my memory is already used just
at bootup. Basically, that means its using up 32 MB right up front.
My notebook, with a somewhat smaller set of "extras" loaded at
bootup and 24 MB of physical RAM, says it has about 87% of the RAM used
up--about 21 MB used up front upon startup.
The lesson? Folks, if you're going to run Win 95, either (a) buy as
much RAM as you can possibily afford or (b) make sure you leave yourself
room to expand more memory in the future when you *can* afford it. For
notebook owners, the answer is clear--if you can afford a 16 MB module (or
even a 32 MB module) over that measly 4 or 8 MB module, then do it--because
you don't have any extra slots to expand into (except in rare cases, like
the 760's which apparently have 2 slots).
Let's just say my Desktop with 48 MB RAM shuts down almost instantly
whereas when it had a mere 16 MB RAM, it took a fair amount of time. I
presume this is because it has less crap to clear out of the swapfile, since
the swapfile got less usage with the larger amount of RAM. And of course,
things move a fair amount snappier, especially when you load up a couple of
decent-sized software packages.
> Networking (got save up for a 3COM 589C PC-Card)
If you see a good deal on these (preferably used), let me know--I
want one too.
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Randy Whittle rwhittle@usa.net
USC Graduate School of Business http://www-scf.usc.edu/~whittle