Computer Repair in Kalamazoo

Ten years ago, Apple Macs product line came stock with around 64MB of memory. Nowadays, one open tab in Safari consumes more available system memory than the systems of yesteryear. Despite everything they do for us, we all wish our computers could do more. As technology advances, things like Facetime video chat over the Internet and increasingly vivid computer game graphics and rendered animations  have created a need for more system memory. Ten years ago, a computer could hop along with one sixteenth of the memory the average computer has today and still be able to load AOL’s bloated dial-up client.

But those days are gone. Skype itself uses more system memory than those computers had, and if you want to be doing anything else, you need the memory. When people refer to the “speed” of a computer, they are usually talking about the relative quickness that programs load and the system responds to commands. This speed is a factor of two components. The processor does all the actual crunching of numbers and whizzing of bits, but in order to be able to do this, the computer needs to have free memory for it to store all the digital equations that make up something as simple as the dashboard calculator.

Mac users (and gamers) tend to be some of the most demanding of their computers, and could stand to benefit the most from a memory upgrade. Assuming you bought your mac within the last 4 years, it probably came with 1 or 2gb (gigabytes) of memory. While that’s fine if your running OSX 10.4, and using your computer to surf the web and type papers, the minute you start running iTunes in the background, or Exposé to run Photoshop on one desktop and browse the internet for stock photos on another, your Mac is going to start taking advantage of what is called virtual memory. This is when the computer runs out of memory, and copies things to a special file on the hard drive, that is noticeably slower.

Memory, also referred to as RAM, is akin to a piece of scratch paper while performing complicated math problems. The more memory a computer has, the more space the CPU has to put things it’s currently working on. Everything from the operating system itself to individual Internet browser tabs is going to use memory. The less RAM a system has, the slower the computer will seem to respond to commands and load programs because it has to trudge all that information back from the computer’s hard drive.

Adding memory is a fast, cheap way to get visible speed from a computer and can often be added without replacing the memory your computer already has. A computer manufactured in the last six years can usually have its memory increased by 2 to 8 times the amount for under $120. The increase in responsiveness can make these older machines feel like new ones at the fraction of the cost of a new machine, and all memory upgrades at Geek Easy are installed without a labor charge. We stock the most common memory options and can order memory in any denomination manufactured.

Not sure if your Mac could benefit from a memory upgrade? Bring it on in and ask. We’ll let you know what the options are, what we have in stock and what performance increase you can expect to see from it. It’s that easy!

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