?amount Of Ram, How much do I REALLY need??? Options

[timski]

Planning to upgrade the 256MB of RAM in my 1GHz G4 PB in order to run Logic Express. I can get an extra 512 for £70, or extra 1000 for £300 from crucial.com i.e. 512 MUCH better vaue. What would you recommend?
Finally - anyone know if LE7 is much more demanding (CPU/RAM wise) than LE6? Concerned LE7 might be slow like Garageband and I don't really need the whole GB Loops thing.

Thanks

[nreyes]

Performance-wise LE7 is around the same as LE6 (maybe slightly improved) and faster than GB. E.g. import a 'slow'-running GB track with all its loops into LE7 and you will see that LE7 is able to playback without any problems you might have been getting in GB.

Basically, GB is not optimised in terms of its 'redrawing' of waveforms etc. which makes it inherently slow, even if it is a good basic package.

To answer your question about RAM, I am not sure why everybody seems to be paying so much. I have the same 1GHz PB with 512 RAM to which I recently added 512 RAM (i.e. taking it to the maximum - both slots filled - of 1G of RAM). Effectively it has 're-lifed' my Mac, so I cannot recommend it enough. I would go for the max, even it means excluding the 256 you already have, and buy 2 x 512M RAM.

Here in France, I bought a 512M RAM for my Powerbook for 100 Euros, which is around 65 quid (depending on exchange rates). The RAM is not from some obscure brand and is guranteed for 2 years.

I'm not sure they do exports to wherever you are, but you should check out www.macway.com

If you do the sums, you could get 1Gig of RAM for around £130, which is far less than just buying an extra chip from the other outlets you mention.
For the absolute price-swindle, buy from Apple and get totally ripped off...

Hope this helps.

[lepetitmartien]

Simple: the more RAM you have in OS X the better!

To be free round the ankles with virtual instruments/samplers, best is to be in the 2 GB figure.

So, the simple solution is: max out as much as you can. In the case of a PB, if you don't have the money to max out on the spot (I can understand that given the prices) plan your buying to make the amount RAM evolve without swapping too much.