More Memory

Today I received and installed the new memory in the ThinkPad. As you'll recall, this is a Core2Duo/1.5 and it previously had 1.5 gigs of memory. It also had a GMA X3100 Intel integrated graphics accelerator. I dropped a 2-gig stick of PC2-5300 in, and this thing now flies. With an explorer window, OneNote, Firefox, Google Talk, XChat, Ruckus, ThunderBird and this word document, plus a bunch of system tray icons and the sidebar running, it's using just about 56% of the system memory. I quit using sidebar before I started using the Internet on this machine, and I am quite impressed with the ram usage on this thing now.

Needless to say, if there's one upgrade anybody is thinking of doing to their computer, let's just confirm that the best one to do is memory. I am even thinking that at some point in time, I would not mind switching to 64-bit Vista and putting another 2 gig stick in, for a total of 4 gigs, but it's not a very high priority for me. By doing 2gig+1gig, I miss out on the speed benefit of having matched ramwith integrated graphics, but I don't mind so much because of how well it's running now anyway. Although I'm tempted to think about the increase in my WEI score if I were to drop a fresh install of Vista X64 on here, with matched 2gig sticks.

In other news, I'm not behind on my novel. I'm also not ahead, but I'm not behind. In other other news, the flash kit, and some other things arrived for my camera. The lightsphere thing looks really cool, and the flash shines very brightly with the rechargeable batteries.