TheBanyanTree: Memory problems

[Laura]

I have a four and a half year old laptop.  That's like 80 years old in human age, I've decided, 
because the poor old thing seems to be developing Alzheimer's.

As the programs I use get updated, and more and more complex and dependent on internet 
access, my poor laptop has gotten slower and slower.  There are days when it just can't 
seem to function at all.  It will get itself connected to the wireless network, then stop dead in 
its tracks.  This is particularly annoying when my son trying to connect to the school 
database on my main computer.  There have been days when he has to try three or four 
times to get the thing to load properly.

I've deleted all the non-essential programs.  I've done ckdsk and defragged. I've 
compressed old files, which gave me a teeny bit more hd space, but didn't seem to affect 
the speed any.  I didnt' think it would, but I thought I'd try.

Finally, last night while we were watching the Olympics, I decided to start some research, so 
I could start thinking about a new laptop.  I was surprised at how inexpensive laptops have 
gotten, but $700 is still a pretty big chunk of change.

I was lauding the virtues of these new, fast, shiny, colorful machines, when my husband 
asked, "How much memory does our laptop have?" 

<blink, blink>

I had no idea.  So I looked it up.  512Mb.  Huh?  Is that all?  Well no *wonder* it won't load 
anything!

I dug around on the Dell site and found the serivice manual for my model to make sure I 
could get to the memory slot fairly easily, and it's a cinch.  So, last night I ordered 1Gb of 
memory for my laptop.  It's supposed to be here by Thursday, so by next weekend, I should 
have a laptop that, while not exactly zippy, should at least be able to load the programs we 
would like to use.

And it didn't cost $700, either.

-- 
Laura
wolfljsh at gmail.com
http://wolfsinger.wordpress.com