by David Smith

Perhaps you've heard that upgrading your memory is important. Or maybe you've heard about upgrading the processor, motherboard, or graphics card. There are many upgrades that are possible for most computers, it's just a matter of getting the best bang for the buck.

Most people find that installing more memory in your computer can be quite cheap, and is usually pretty helpful. It allows you to do more tasks, more efficiently. For instance having more memory could help an excel spreadsheet to run a calculation faster. Opening up two Internet browsers wouldn't cause the whole computer to get slower. Even opening up a computer program to run it would be faster.

For the most part it's best to start with at the very least 512MB, and with memory as cheap as it is these days, and with the future in mind, 1GB should be your goal. Especially if you're going to run Windows Vista or be using the computer for games or anything more than just simple web browsing and word processors. It's not uncommon today to see two to four gigabytes in your high-end computers.

What you must keep in mind is that sometimes it's difficult to match the memory you need with the computer. You have to have the right size, and picking the right speed memory makes a difference as well.

Take note that laptop memory is generally a different size than what you can find in desktops. So, you won't find it interchangeable. The first place to look is in the users manual or any documentation you have with the computer, or on the manufacturer's website.

So, once you have the right size figured out, you have to go one step extra. You have to find out if you have the room to install more memory in your computer. Each computer has a limited amount of physical space to install the memory, and a limit to how much memory can be used. So, you'll have to find out how much physical space is available, and what the impact will be if you have to switch smaller chips with bigger chips. For instance if your computer has two slots filled with 256MB chips for a total of 512MB, and you bought two 512MB chips. You would only have 1GB of memory, and the old 256MB chips will not be able to be used. It's a little complicated, but worth the trouble to figure out.

Typically you can find much of this in your user's manual, or the manufacturer's website. If not many of the memory manufacturers such as Kingston and Crucial have excellent websites that have the specs for most of the computers made in the last decade or two. That's an excellent backup source of information.

Dollar for dollar, buck for buck upgrading the computer memory is the most efficient upgrade path for most computers. And rather than going out and buying a new computer every few years, a good defrag and an increase in memory is often enough to do the trick.

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