1
I see that the Activity Monitory shows a variety of information about System Memory usage. Are their particular values or perhaps ratios that would indicate with certainty that I need to upgrade my RAM?
At this moment, I'm running more than I usually do. I've got a couple of virtual machines running, several resource intensive development tools, three different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari), Mail, a database application, and a productivity tracking application. Normally, I run about half of those simultaneously. I have 4GB of RAM installed, and the Activity Monitor reports that I have:
Free: 518.5 MB
Wired: 1.08 GB
Active: 1.84 GB
Inactive: 587 MB
Used: 3.49 GB
VM size: 155.62 GB
Page ins: 1.08 GB
Page outs: 792 KB
Swap used: 16.7 MB
I know it is "only" about $90 to upgrade, but I see no point in spending money unless I truly acquire new capabilities or a notable increase in performance.
In case you didn't already know, you can buy RAM from Crucial at much lower prices than what Apple charge. However, this only applies if you're comfortable with replacing the ram yourself. http://crucial.com
– Jasarien – 2011-05-26T11:22:21.313Adding RAM to a unibody Macbook Pro yourself is not the easiest thing to do.. – Joseph Hansen – 2011-05-26T11:28:12.053
Sure it is. A few little screws on the base and that's it. It's not as easy as multipart cases, but it's hardly an epic task. – Lukasa – 2011-05-26T13:35:14.423
If you already have 4GB, then ensure your MacBook Pro model and OSX version support more than 4GB before spending any money on it. :) MacTracker may help you figure that out.
– Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2011-05-26T15:39:21.520