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
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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