• accideath@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Playing devils advocate here: As someone who deals with stuff like that, you also wouldn’t buy the base model mac. The average computer user can get by with 8GB just fine and it’s not like you can’t configure Macs with more than that.

    That of course doesn’t justify the abhorrent price of the upgrades…

    • Specal@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      And here I am, putting 16gb in every machine I work on because it’s so damn cheap there’s no reason not to future proof

      • accideath@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I mean, same. The difference in price for 8GB and 16GB is negligible, especially if you want dual channel on desktops

        • Specal@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          My girlfriends mum wanted to know why her laptop was slow… It was because HP thought that 4gb of ram is acceptable in 2022 (when the laptop was sold). Granted ram wasn’t as cheap then as it is now… Still I paid £30 for a brand new 8gb DDR4 sodimm, there’s not reason hp couldn’t do that. It’s annoying the corners these company cut.

          • accideath@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            My experience is, that 4GB is just about useable for a bit of web browsing and similar stuff. Even on windows 11. I have an old Surface Pro 4 laying around that, in a pinch, works perfectly fine with 11. Of course, it’s not fast. But it’s totally useable.

            • Specal@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Her laptop just wasn’t having it, windows 11, windows was using 3.7gb ram took about 30 seconds for task manager to open. As soon as I upgraded the ram is was usable.

              I checked for any surprising background services or anti virus software and there was nothing really

              • accideath@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                That sounds more like issues Windows would have running on an HDD (or maybe eMMC) instead of an SSD… Bit that wouldn’t explain why it got better, when you upgraded the RAM…

                • Specal@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  It’s not worth trying to understand windows ram usage, it will drive any same person insane. The laptop uses intel optane as it’s main drive, which is slower than an SSD but much much lower latency so should actually be perfect for the job of being swap. But it shit the bed.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I just slap in 32GB on every computer I build because the MoBos can take 128GB and anything less feels cheap and silly.

    • PraiseTheSoup@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      The average computer user can get by with 8GB just fine

      Hard disagree. The average computer user is idling at 5gb already because the average computer user is stupid.

      • accideath@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Still leaves 3gb for the web browser and the average user isn’t using anything else anyways. And even on chrome that’s quite a few pages.

      • accideath@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Maybe you’re not an average user then. Most people just browse the web and maybe manage some photos or fill out a document once in a while. You could do that on 4GB if you wanted to, let alone 8.

        • Specal@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I wouldn’t say 4gb is usable for the average consumer. Using the assumption they’re using windows 11 that’ll eat 3.7 ish GB of ram just idling.

          • uis@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            How? I have 108 tabs open and still use 2.67GB of RAM.

            • Specal@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Tabs of what? Chromes ram usage is more of a meme than an actual ram issue, windows will only allow an application to use so much ram depending on ram availability

              • uis@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                108 tabs in chromium. Mentioned RAM usage is total RAM usage including all system and kernel, but excluding page cache. Forgot to mention libreoffice in background.

          • accideath@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            You forget there though, that a lot of the RAM, that Windows (and most modern operating systems) uses, while idling, is a cache of programs you’re likely to open and that gets cleared, if you open something else. That has been a thing since Vista and was btw one of the reasons why Vista was criticized for high memory useage. Windows 11 is very useable with 4GB of RAM, if you’re not planning to do something bigger than browsing the web or editing a word document.

            • Specal@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I’m not forgetting that, but it won’t just clear that ram it will want to put it into swap, and depending on your storage speed that can slow tasks down. Making it quite stuttery.

              • accideath@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                I mean, a (good) SSD is worth quite a lot, even on very old systems. I have an old 2008 MacBook laying around. It’s certainly not fast but with an SSD it’s totally useable, even on current macOS versions.

                • Specal@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Oh for sure, I remember buying my first SSD and booting windows in under 10 seconds and being like whaaaat.

                  I am starting to think maybe I am a ram hog.