I just finished my normal Sunday morning routine of breakfast with the Sunday paper. I always peruse the Sunday high tech ads to keep tabs on prices. Computer prices continue to drop (and I still think manufacturers are getting a kick back from Microsoft) to help spur sluggish sales.
However, the past few weeks, I picked up on another trend; increased RAM.
In this week’s big 4 ads (Office Depot, Office Max, Circuit City, and Best Buy), there were 43 desktop and laptop ads. Out of these 43 systems, only one of them had 1 GB of RAM. That was the cheapest desktop system from Best Buy. Only two other systems had 2 GB of RAM. The rest had a mixture of 3, 4, 5, and even 6 GB of RAM!
All these systems, of course, had Windows Vista.
Vista has been with us now for more than 18 months already and finally hardware specifications are getting beefy enough to run Vista at an acceptable speed. 2 GB of RAM is truly the bare minimum you should be running with Vista.
Although, I am still not a fan of Vista, I am a realist. Vista is not going away any time soon and consumers are too lazy to investigate other viable options and too stubborn to learn anything new that doesn’t say Microsoft on it.
The increased RAM is a needed change in the industry. A Vista computer with 3 or more GB of RAM will run much smoother than with less RAM. And no other version of Windows has ever needed more. My recommendation for Vista buyers: Get 4 GB or more of RAM.
