Apple Understanding Apple Memory: Do I need more?

I want to know if I should buy some more memory for my iBook. At the moment it's got 512Mb and it feels fine, but I could upgrade to a gig for about £40, which is basically peanuts.

I have read (on here) that until my "inactive" memory drops to near zero, there is no point in getting any more RAM, as the system simply doesn't need it. My inactive meory never drops below 100mb (suggesting I don't need any more ram), however my page file is huge. According to the activity monitor, my applications are using around 2gigs of page file. Surely that's making my computer run much slower than it should? Basically I don't realy understand the memory usage for macs. Should I buy more ram or not?

Danke Schøn

 

With mac os x, you have Active memory which is ram thats actually being used, and inactive memory which isn't being used, but is reserved for applications. Then you have free memory wich is completely free.

Its always a good idea to upgrade your memory, but its not vital to get more unless you really do notice a slow down.

You could try disableing dashboard with tinker tool, that'll free up some extra memory if you feel you need it.

I'm running with 512mb ram in my ibook too, hopefully upgrading to 1.5gb soon, and I'm going to see if a 7200rpm hard drive would over heat it or not, if not, i'll stick one in.

Don't worry about the page file, or virtual memory (whatever its called), its fine how it is.

 

Forget the technical stuff, £40 is well worth spending for a bump to 1gb

 

RAM is something that you can never have enough of (within reason, obviously). 1GB should yield a noticable increase

 

That's what I thought really. I'll let you know how I get on

EDIT: Anyone know if the graphics memory is allocated from the main ram, or if it's separate? Just wanna know if it'll make things smoother when I'm dual-screening.

 

I think its seperate, and I think the reason they disable the screen spanning from the ibook is because the graphics card is too crap to deal with it properly!

 

All macs have dedicated graphics memory