Digital BW, The Print

Lyons Cox writes:

> Since the 512 RAM was a limitation of Win98 ...

I don't recall Win98 being limited to 512 MB, although it handled large
amounts of RAM quite poorly.

> ... I was wondering if people were upgrading their
> RAM at the same time?

You can never have too much RAM, and modern bloatware requires more and
more of it to accomplish the same things.

> I've stuck other equipment into the box but haven't done a RAM upgrade yet
> and was wondering if its a simple?

Usually it's just a matter of opening the box and plugging in some new
memory (with the computer off).  Then you turn things back on and you're
in business.

> I'd like to go from 512 to 1G.  Suggestions?

Buy some memory and plug it in.  Look at the memory you have installed,
first, though.  To get to the maximum on a machine, you'll have to
install the largest memory modules you can, and if smaller modules were
installed at the factory, you'll have to unplug those and plug in new
ones to reach the configuration limit.

In any case, many PCs won't handle more than 1.5 GB from a hardware
standpoint, and Windows XP can't go past 2 GB, I think.  The 32-bit
architecture for the hardware can't directly support more than 4 GB.
All of this is more than enough for most purposes, but when you edit
images, you can never have enough RAM.  I have the maximum of 1.5 GB
installed on my machine, and it is still just barely enough to load MF
scans.  If I went to a higher resolution scanner or a larger film
format, I'd be unable to process scans at all, since neither the OS nor
the hardware will configure enough memory to do it.