so, i’m planning on getting the Macbook Air and i don’t know if i want 8 GB memory or 16 GB, basically what does memory mean? will the computer be stronger with 16 GB?
In: Technology
Your RAM or memory is what allows you to multitask. If you have more RAM you can have more operations as well as more complex operations running at the same time. It depends on how you’ll be using your Mac. If you need heavy video editing etc, you’ll want more RAM. Of yoy only need browsing and creating documents etc, lesser RAM is enough but you can still go for higher RAM.
Wellllll I could give an ELI5 but I can save you time and say get the 16gb 🙂 it’s worth it.
r/apple might know better.
TLDR: is your desky messy and covered with the things you are working on? If no 8GB is fine.
Memory, or RAM, is where software stores information it needs to access quickly.
One dated metaphor might be to think of memory as the space on your desk, where you keep the papers you are currently working on, while a filing cabinet or bookshelf more like a hard drive and backpack would be more like portable drive. The filing cabinet can store a lot more but to do that has to organize them in a way that makes picking an individual item out take more time.
More memory is like having a bigger desk, you can have more active projects and work on bigger projects. Like space on your desk you can free up memory by putting away things you are not currently working on, closing an application or browser window you don’t need open right this moment.
As a general student (meaning not one with a computer focused major like digital art, music or some engineering fields) the largest use of memory is probably going to be a web browser with multiple tabs open while doing research. As long as you are not like me and don’t keep dozens upon dozens of tabs open you will likely never notice the difference between the 8 and 16.
(i am currently using about 20GB or ram to run a web browser with dozens of tabs across 10 browser windows, also my physical desk has about enough free space on it to write a note on a post it without me having to move something, don’t be like me)
Memory is just how much stuff your computer can keep track of at the same time. If you have a Word document on your disk and want to edit it, your computer fetches it from the disk and into memory so that it can be worked on. If you want to browse the web, your computer fetches the webpage you’re looking at and holds that in memory so that it can be displayed and interacted with.
Memory is needed for everything your computer is *currently* dealing with. The more memory you have, the *more stuff* your computer can deal with at once. A computer with 16g of memory will be “stronger” in the sense that it can do *more* stuff, but not stronger in the sense that it will be *faster.*
The *amount* of memory shouldn’t affect how *fast* the computer operates unless you start doing so much stuff that you use up all the memory. If you use up all the memory, your computer might start using some of your *drive* space for the excess stuff it needs to keep track of, which is very very slow. That shouldn’t be a problem unless you try to do too much stuff at once, though. If all you’re going to use it for is stuff like editing basic documents like Word documents and spreadsheets and netflix and such, 8g is fine. Just don’t open too many tabs if you use a memory-hog browser like Chrome.
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