Frequently Asked Questions

Other sites recommend smaller amounts of RAM, often as low as 512MB. Why do you recommend more?

These sites may have been written some time ago and be a little out of date. While smaller amounts of RAM were suitable for Windows XP, Vista is more resource-intensive, so it runs best with a larger amount of RAM, especially if you're running the Home Premium or Ultimate versions. Another factor is that the performance of other components (CPUs etc.) in a typical computer is constantly increasing, so the optimum amount of RAM needs to increase as well in order to take advantage of these improvements (otherwise the RAM just becomes a bottleneck and you don't maximize the benefits as other components improve). Finally, software applications become more demanding in terms of resources over time, as they include more sophisticated graphics and additional functionality, so the amount of RAM required (and the performance of other components) needs to increase to keep pace with these additional demands.

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