How much ram to run PSE9 and LR4 effectively?

[Michelleltn]

My current laptop is only 1G (RAM) and not expandable. SO I am in the market for a new one. I am looking at a 6G RAM with 640 hd.

Am I going to be frustrated trying to go back and forth between these programs? I cannot even run PSE9 right now. Picasa 3 hangs up as is.

[kirbinster]

Too early to know, the final product is not out so the exact requirements are not yet know. Six gigs will likely work, but memory is so cheap I would go for more.

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by kirbinster

memory is so cheap I would go for more.

She's talking about a laptop. Laptop memory doesn't come cheaply.

[kirbinster]

Originally Posted by Doug Pardee

She's talking about a laptop. Laptop memory doesn't come cheaply.

Well I guess it all depends on how you define "cheaply" Sure it costs more than desktop memory, but it is still fairly cheap. Here is some specific pricing: Newegg.com - Laptop Memory, Laptop RAM

[mrteacherdude]

She also said that her laptop is not expandable...

I have a laptop with 4G of RAM and I can run LR 3 and PSE 9 at the same time, and probably a couple of other things such as Firefox with a couple of tabs open, and I think I've even been running a video converter in the background. The laptop does "ok" under these conditions, and performance improves significantly if I shut everything but the photo applications off. I have no idea what LR4 is going to be like. Another DPS member posted in the Chit Chat thread that his copy of LR4 beta is incredibly hungry and sucking up all his RAM, referring to it as a "big fat dog." I don't recall now how much RAM he said he had, but it was quite a bit. Again, beta copy of the software.

Personally, if I were shopping for a new laptop and didn't want to shell out a huge amount of money for it, I would try to find one with a minimum of 8G's of RAM. Laptops with this amount of RAM are becoming more common and there are some good deals on them at times.

[kirbinster]

Originally Posted by mrteacherdude

She also said that her laptop is not expandable...

.

I am the one that said it is a dog and routinely after a little use is claiming over 2 gigs of ram. As for not expandable that typically means that you cannot add additional memory chips, but you can typically remove what you have and add larger memory chips. That is probably much more cost effective than buying a new box unless there is some other reason for doing so. Also since win Vista you can use USB memory as what they call ReadyBoost which can help things out sometimes.

[mrteacherdude]

Originally Posted by kirbinster

I am the one that said it is a dog and routinely after a little use is claiming over 2 gigs of ram. As for not expandable that typically means that you cannot add additional memory chips, but you can typically remove what you have and add larger memory chips. That is probably much more cost effective than buying a new box unless there is some other reason for doing so. Also since win Vista you can use USB memory as what they call ReadyBoost which can help things out sometimes.

Ahhh.. so you are I wrote my response in kind of a hurry so didn't go back and look to see exactly who posted the thread, just remembered seeing it; didn't mean to offend if that's the case.

I know what you're saying about the expandability of laptops in terms of memory, but without knowing more about the limitations of her specific laptop, it's kind of difficult to say just what she can do with it and how effective it will be. One of my laptops had an extra slot for memory and it was expandable to a max of 1.5G, period. I don't recall why now but I believe it had something to do with the motherboard structure or maybe even the structure of the RAM itself, as I don't think the OS really gave a crap how much memory it had to work with.

While perhaps being more cost effective to find larger capacity memory to go into the existing laptop, I sometimes find it is more trouble than it is worth if it is an older processor and architecture in the thing to begin with, and still leads to a less than satisfactory experience. A number of years ago, I had a bunch of laptops that I was running Autodesk on. The processors were right at the lower edge of what was required and they had more than enough RAM for the task, but after a couple of update cycles on the software, the processors just were not up to the task and ultimately choked, no amount of RAM was going to solve the problem.

I just briefly read something about ReadyBoost yesterday... don't remember where now (maybe it was something you posted?), but that sounds intriguing, I'll have to check that out.