Thanks for the Memory!

[bjarvis]

My XP box has been a little sluggish with 512 MB of RAM... tolerable but slower than it should be. My Linux box is running 256 MB of RAM very nicely but the Linux package I'm planning to experiment with asks for a full gigabyte. My 512 MB iMac has always been slow but the additional burden of the growing MP3 library in iTunes and photo library in iPhoto makes both those applications teeter on the brink of unusable; serious multitasking isn't practical.

Since I've decided not to spend $2k for a Mac Book, I did a little online shopping yesterday to get the current toys up to par.

• Two 512 MB DIMMs have been ordered for the XP box, taking it to its maximum 1 GB capacity. I'll probably give away the two 256 MB DIMMs currently installed as I have no use for them.
  
• A 1 GB DIMM has been ordered for the Linux box. The existing 256 MB DIMM will likely stay in place so long as the mismatched densities don't cause performance degradation, otherwise it's history too.
  
• The iMac is tricker. There are two memory slots currently occupied with 256 MB SoDIMMs, one easily accessed in the bottom and the other accessible only with major and seriously complicated surgery. I've decided to leave the deeply embedded 256 MB unit in place and swap the easily accessed 256 MB SoDIMM with a 512 MB version. The RAM will only be expanded to 768 MB but that's a 50% improvement over the current level and 75% of the hardware's theoretical maximum. That should buy enough performance to reconsider the Mac Book next year.
  

Now to wait for all of the toys to arrive...